So, for everything you're doing wrong if have to say...umm...Uhhhh....yeah I've got nothing lol. If what you're doing is working and you hae great plants keep doing it and never switch it up. I would even write down what you're doing now because all of us here on the forum almost never have perfect and beautiful set of crops, we always have concerns but yours seem to be about not having any concerns haha. Keep doing what you're doing, I'm quite jealous and like to see some pictures!

pictures? you want pictures? I got pictures.

prepare for a stream of them, as I have many peppers

this thai bird pepper is the champion of the garden.

this thai is much smaller for some reason. always lagged behind the other two. I still love him though.

this thai was so screwed up at one point I almost pulled him out and threw him away. glad I didn't, because he's almost caught up to the champ.

2 days ago I decided to count how many flower buds were on this guy. I lost count and gave up at 50. he's gonna be busy this summer. I bought this one at lowes a month ago, he looked like crap when I got him. now look at him.

edit: forgot to mention he's a habanero. probably worth knowing when deciding how if at all to comment on this one.

This post was edited by judo_and_peppers on Tue, Jun 4, 13 at 11:11

this is one of my red bhut/ghost peppers. first one to be repotted, he's in straight vigoro potting soil that doesn't even have any bone meal mixed in. but he's doing good, so next year I might buy more of that stuff and add it to the mix.

this is my other red bhut. he's in a mix of my dad's compost and regular potting soil. this was also before I put together the mix described in the first post.

this is my 'brain strain' 7 pot/scorpion pepper (a scorpion pepper and a 7 pot are just 2 names for the same thing right? obviously it's not the moruga variety).

at first (before seeing pictures of other people's similar peppers on here) I thought there was something wrong with him because he just had one center stalk with huge leaves, while other peppers were bushing out like crazy, so I trimmed some of his bigger leaves to encourage new bushy growth. I'm starting to think that was unnecessary, but he's developing some undergrowth, so maybe that means more places for pepper buds to appear.

the caterpillars love this plant, so I need to check on him really often. this is also the only one on which I've seen whiteflies.

this tabasco was a rescue. when I got it it was 2 months old, with just 2 tiny little embryonic leaves. my friend had been keeping it in a half inch of soil on his windowsill, saying he'd repot it when it got bigger. now we all know about peppers and their roots, and why it didn't get bigger. well, it's been in a bigger pot since mid april, and it looks amazing now. I can't even begin to count how many flower buds are on it, but I know once it starts bearing I'm gonna stay pretty busy harvesting them.

the thing is only about 5" tall, so I know it's stunted. but it's extremely bushy. if I took a pic from the top you'd barely see any soil. it's seriously the healthiest looking plant in my garden.

this guy was doing even worse than the other tabasco when I got him, so I didn't give him much attention because I expected him to die. I wasn't even gonna bother trying to grow him, but I repotted him, and he was doing well. I waited the longest to repot this one out of his 6" deep starter pot (ran out of soil and wasn't in a rush, he was the runt of the garden).

when I did, I tried something new by digging him up and washing the roots. I was a bit too rough, so he went thru a period of shock. now he's finally making a recovery. he started showing flower buds, but I'm still trying to get him to get bigger and healthier, so I trimmed them off. every day he's looking better and better. I think I should trim some leaves off to encourage him to branch out more like I did with his big brother.

also, these seeds (both tabascos) came from a pepper my friend ate, not one that was left on the plant to develop seeds, so the seeds he started from are a bit weaker.

also, for some reason the flash came on when I took that picture, so the color isn't accurate. he's a much darker green than he looks in the pic.

I bought this serrano a few weeks ago at lowes. he looked like he was from a shipment that arrived a while before, and he was in the back of the shelf not getting any sun. he looked terrible when I got him, but he had some flowers on him, and what looked like one baby pepper beginning to grow. I wanted to encourage root development (they came in little 3-4" deep cardboard pots and were more root bound than anything I've ever seen, I put him in the same 12" deep pot the rest are in) so I snipped the flower buds so the plant's energy wouldn't be focused on pepper development. now he's slowly making a recovery.

he's got what looks like little white hairs/fuzz all over the upper stem and the base of the leaves, that I've never seen on any other peppers. is that normal?

the flash didn't come on with this pic, he's just really light green. is that a bad thing? again he's a rescue plant though, compared to where he started he's doing great.

also, he has 3 stems in the pot, telling me there were 3 seeds in there. I have this stigma against killing healthy plants, but I'm thinking about snipping the smallest one at the base to make more room for the other 2. good or bad idea?

ok, last pic for the day.

this is my other 7 pot. he was the first seed to sprout, and was originally doing the best. then for some reason he just stalled out and completely stopped making any size gains. no new growth, and the leaves didn't get any bigger. so my friend and I decided to pull him out and wash the roots. my friend (the same guy who was killing his tabascos) didn't think the roots were that deep, so he took the spade and dug tore it out of the pot, only keeping the top 3" of roots when were reaching the bottom of the pot before. we replanted him and he wilted really bad. I was about to give up, then a few days ago his leaves perked back up, then wilted again, then perked back up again, then wilted again. he's the most bipolar plant I've ever seen.

it's been a month since he's shown new leaf growth (started stalling 2 weeks before I washed the roots, and that was 2 weeks ago with no new growth since). all those leaves have been there a month. so I don't know what the #$%^ is wrong with him, but I'm not gonna throw him away til he's brown and dead. I'm not optimistic but I'll keep watching him, and see what happens.

ok, that's the last of them. any feedback? please don't hesitate to comment because you don't have experience with all of the varieties I'm growing. or any of them really, many aspects of pepper gardening apply equally to all varieties. so I'll still value your input even if you only have one comment to make.

I'm looking for anything I can get out of you guys. I want to learn. I've already learned a lot here, for which I am deeply grateful.

I'd also like some advice on how to upload multiple pictures into one post, that way I don't have to be such a spammer to show my whole garden. the user interface is much less friendly on here than it is on the judo forum that I'm an administrator of, so this is a new experience to me.

Just sort of random questions - have you used those size of pots before? How big are they? Are they the peppers' "final home"?

I have all of mine in 4.5 -5 gallon buckets. Yours don't appear to be suffering whatsoever, in fact they look healthier than mine, and I'm wondering if I've been too cautious.

I was offered a few dozen of those size pots and took them to grow tobacco (as an experiment, IâÂÂve never grown tobacco before). I think theyâÂÂre 2 gallon pots, but I could be wrong.

It looks like youâÂÂve done an awesome job so far. The Thai Bird is finicky, but once it takes off they are beyond prolific. IâÂÂve labelled them âÂÂenough alreadyâ peppers.
Good work!

this is my first year growing. I don't know if they're the peppers' final home or not. everything I know about peppers tells me they need bigger pots, but they're doing great in these, and frankly if the pots stop them from ever growing past this size I'd be fine with that. they're huge already, with plenty of room to grow peppers.

plus right now I live at my parent's huge house (with accompanying huge yard) to try to save money, but we're moving to an apartment in a month, so my growing space will be limited. as such it's in my best interest to keep things as compact as I can for now until I find out how much space I'll have.

also my concern is that if I transplant them the received wisdom is that I'd need to prune off all the flowers, and I'm excited about getting edible peppers as soon as possible. so if they're doing good in these pots, I'm hesitant to transplant them this season.

no further commentary? I must admit I'm slightly disappointed.

also, my biggest thai plant has it's first pepper on it! god I feel like such a noob for being so excited about it, but I can't wait to eat that bad boy. thai's are well within the range of what I can eat whole. so when that thing's color turns I'm just gonna pluck it, rinse it, and pop it in my mouth.

This post was edited by judo_and_peppers on Wed, Jun 5, 13 at 10:26

Hi Judo, I like those "thai" so healthy and beautiful.

Prune all the flowers for transplanting, I never knew that. Today I repotted my scorpion, it has flowers and very young pod. I have grown it in 17 cm container and it has grown very big so i repotted to a about 7 gallon container. I repotted many plants today, most of them have flowers. I do not know what is going to happen.

"some reason he just stalled out and completely stopped making any size gains." Sometimes my plants also had similar problem when I repotted small seedlings to very big containers. As a solution I repotted to the right size containers again with new potting soil but I never wash the old soil completely only I do untangled the roots. Three times repotting is the best for my seedlings to our climatic condition.

Thank you for sharing your pictures and experiences.

Good luck

Caelian

This post was edited by chilliwin on Wed, Jun 5, 13 at 16:46

those thai are serious. as of yesterday the second biggest one has now surpassed the champion by a few inches. I suspect this is because he's in the same pot as the one that was doing really poorly, and in order to save that one I hit them with a lot more fertilizer than the other ones. the squeaky wheel gets the grease, I guess.

that's what I had been told, but I imagine how you transplant them plays a big role.

most of my plants were transplanted out of their starter pots by putting the current pot in the new pot, filling in the dirt around it, pulling out the current pot (to leave a perfect indentation of it in the soil of the new pot), cutting out it's bottom and cutting a slit up the side, and dropping it back in the hole, then sliding the sides of the pot out, thereby repotting it with zero impact on the roots. if you do it like that, there's no stress on the plant, and the flowers need not be pruned. frankly I think the plants may be too big to do that now.

that 7 pot was doing poorly for several weeks before I pulled it out and washed the roots. the reason it was doing poorly before was a mystery (had other 7pots in the same size container with the same soil that were doing great). I know why it's doing bad now: it had a fully developed root system off which all but the top 3-5" were ripped off by my idiot friend, who refuses to believe peppers have deep roots.

I'm sure I'll be posting more once this crazy storm passes and my plants can get some sun and recover. I'll probably make a new thread do it without writing a dissertation about each picture so the thread is easier to comment on.

thank you for your feedback and well wishes.

-Jason