What size pot for individual chilli plant?

beingfrugal

When I come to pot my seedlings what size pot would suit a chilli plant? I'm wanting to pass 1 onto my spice mad cousin for his birthday as want to get the sizing right for individuals.

I was thinking

5" Round Lightweight (Squat) Pot Ref: POT03

A 5" Round Lightweight (Squat) Pot, both econmical and extremely practical.

Dimensions 13cm diameter x 9.9cm depth.


What do you think? Big enough? Too big?

serena

When you pot up seedlings, you need to do it in stages at first.

Choose a pot just big enough to tuck the roots into, and space for a bit of compost - I usually pot up into 3" square pots (15 fit exactly into a seedtray, which I use as a carrying tray). Square pots use less compost than round, and fit more economically onto staging/windowsill.

[IMG]file:///C:/Users/Serena/AppData/Local/Temp/moz-screenshot-2.png[/IMG]

Potting into a too large pot means that there's a lot of compost around that can get over wet and cause the seedling roots to rot.

I know it seems like one more thing, but I think it's worth it.

When the pot is pretty full of roots, then I often pot straight into the final 6" pots - usually I put some compost in the larger pot, add an empty 3" pot, fill around it. Remove it, then slot the plant straight in to the custom fit space! Little bit more compost of necessary, water.

eta - sorry, that picture came out a bit large! Actually the ones I use are more rigid plastic than the ones in that picture, but you get the idea!

davemorton

So when I just planted my seeds directly into 4" round pots, that was not the way I should have done it?

Lotus-eater

davemorton wrote: »

So when I just planted my seeds directly into 4" round pots, that was not the way I should have done it?

Well apparently, I know of the "compost going sour" thing, but I have never been a true believer, as long as the compost isn't kept too wet.

So last year and the year before, I tried an experiment, after germinating chilli seeds and growing them to have one true set of leaves, I pri-cked them out.
Half went into pot of about 3" and half into bigger pots, up to 6".

When they had all grown enough, they went into their final pots, I use the supermarket flower buckets.

The chillies placed in the bigger pots from pri-cking out, day one, grew better and faster than the ones that had to be moved again.

Happened both years, same thing.

Now I'm not saying mine is the be all and end all of experiments, DYOR etc, but if I had the space, I'd be putting mine straight into the bigger pots.

It worked the same with toms as well.

balloo_2

The final planting of my chili's last year was in pots free from Asda the ones the flowers come in from Holland and they throw away afterwards.

Kay_Peel

I put the seedlings into 3" pots. I always seem to kill them when I transfer them to anything bigger.

foreign_correspondent

for the final pot, bigger is generally better - 8" is good, but most chillies will do ok in 5" and it fits on most people's windowsills better... but it does depend to an extent on the variety - some chillies only ever grow to about 10-12" high, whilst others can grown to 6 or 7 feet...

serena

I've obviously only grown the smaller ones! Really, you can get chillies that grow to 6 or 7ft? I want some!

I err on the side of caution when potting up because it works for me.

I do believe however that if you have a system for growing a particular plant that works for you, then don't let anyone however expert persuade you otherwise!

Dave Morton - I don't usually sow seeds in pots any bigger than 3" because of the amount of compost. This size pot uses about the right amount of seeds of most things for the average garden. I use it for cuttings as well, putting about 9 in each pot. I then pot up as required - and often plant perennials and small shrubs out from 3" pots - used to be called 'liners' in nurseries as plants would be planted out or 'lined' out from 3" pots into a nursery bed to grow on. This is still a very useful technique for small scale growers raising plants for themselves. Obviously only for hardy plants, rather than ones intended to be grown under cover or in containers. Just because you see all sorts of plants offered in large containers in garden centres doesn't mean it's the best way to do it - they have to sell them!