Smallest size pot for peppers?

[gardening_gal]

I've run out of both compost and space but I'm loathe to get rid of the few (remarkably healthy!) pepper plants that were still to be potted on to their final containers.

I'm a bit skint at the moment so don't want to be shelling out for loads more pots and compost but I'm wondering what is the smallest size pot I could get away with for each of them?

I have a few old pots of various sizes kicking around, that came from plants from the garden centre and I'm wondering if they might do, although they're not very big. Also, smaller pots = smaller amount of compost needed, but there's no point if there's a certain basic size it would be best not going under. Be grateful for advice.

[Bill HH]

I suppose it depends on the type and final size of pepper, I have a couple of chilli plants that only yield small fruit and grow to about 10 inches high. they are in 7 inch pots. However if they get pot bound I shall move them to more palatial accommodation. You could scrounge some free flower buckets from the co-op or Morrisons of course.

[gardening_gal]

Unfortunately they don't get given away here. I've asked in several supermarkets including Aldi and Lidl, from central Scotland to the Highlands. I'm told it's because Scotland has a different supplier therefore different policy as to what happens with their pots/buckets.

All I know about the plants is that they are sweet peppers. Someone 'helpfully' helped me tidy up one day and binned several empty seed packets before I had a chance to write the names on sticks.

[Scarlet]

You should pot each chilli on to the appropriate size, going up a size each time as Bill has said. When it's roots start to show at the bottom, move up a pot.

I know that probably doesn't answer your question but it's usually the way I pot on. I wouldn't move a small chilli plant (or any plant really) directly into a big flower bucket. It gets moved on once it's outgrown the pot it's in. Meanwhile you can look out for something bigger.. My local garden centre has a recycle pots corner, I often pick up some there.
As for compost, start a compost bin it soon starts producing in this weather

[Fleurisa]

Sweet peppers tend to be fairly large plants, 5 litre pots would be a good size, as long as you are able to water and feed them often enough they will be ok. Don't go on holiday until October!

[gardening_gal]

Sweet peppers tend to be fairly large plants, 5 litre pots would be a good size, as long as you are able to water and feed them often enough they will be ok. Don't go on holiday until October!

No chance of a holiday at all for the foreseeable so that won't matter.

[Penellype]

As usual I try to fit a quart into a pint pot. My peppers (snackbite orange and california wonder) make do with 2 litre pots and live on the landing windowsill. I get perfectly acceptable small peppers from them - currently the biggest are about 3 inches long and starting to turn orange. There are about 6 peppers on each plant. I've grown them like this for the last few years, with just a little tomato feed occasionally, and they are fine. They won't produce huge, thick walled peppers like the ones you buy in the shops, but I can't eat one of those by myself anyway.

[bario1]

I've got flower buckets for free from the Asda in Edinburgh, GardeningGal...


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[Alison]

My potted peppers are in a min of 10" pots but I have chillies in ones about half that diameter.

[mothhawk]

I have a sweet pepper on the windowsill in a pot 14cm diameter and 18cm deep. It's been in that for two and a half years now, and still keeps giving me cute one person peppers about 3 or 4 inches diameter. When it finishes a flush of fruit, I cut it down by about half, feed it with houseplant food when I do the rest of the houseplants, and it regrows and flowers again. Not bad for a seed from a supermarket pepper

[Chippy Minton]

Well, I guess if the only other option is to compost them put them in whatever you've got and see what happens. For what it's worth I grew 2 small bush chillies (Prairie Fire) in those plastic cups you get at water coolers and they cropped, not brilliant, but they cropped.