Container Pepper

New Peppers growing on my Container Pepper

I love to container garden. Every year when it's time to start clearing out the spring garden for fall planting it's hard to see a seasons worth of crops end.  Container gardening is my way of keeping the planting  going.  My husband decided to carry the craft a little farther by combining our spring crop with the container garden.  If anyone had ever hinted that pepper plants can be kept alive for almost a year, and still produce crops I'd probably have laughed.

My peppers did very well last year.  There became a time when the plant was still healthy.  The blossoms were not appearing any longer.   The crops were not getting any larger.  I figured they had probably ran there course for the year.  I came home from work one day in early fall and my husband had rescued the two remaining spring plants in the garden.  One red pepper, and one jalapeno pepper.

He carefully dug a hole around each plant deep enough to be sure he did not miss any roots.  He used two 10 gallon icing buckets he retrieved from work (for free).  Five drain holes are drilled into the bottom of each bucket.  The lid works perfectly to catch any run off .  The bucket was filled with a 50/50 mixture of potting soil and fresh compost.  The bottom of the bucket was filled abut 12 inches full of soil and the plant set inside.  The bucket was than filled to the top and the soil packet tightly.

I immediately gave both peppers a nice drink of cold, leftover coffee (plants love this).  I was still doubtful that any good would come of this.  I set the plant in a dining room bay window because it has the best direct sun.  I continued to feed the plant and kept a close eye on it hoping for the best.

Before long the remaining peppers began to grow again, and finally ripen.  I'd walk from my kitchen counter to my bay window and pick a pepper directly from the plant for dinner.  That's my kinda shopping!  Now, almost a year after I first planted these peppers in the garden they are still sitting in the bay window and producing new peppers.  My only question now is should I leave it growing where it is, or put it back in the garden when the weather is ready?  Oh well, I'll decide that later.