How to grow Cayenne peppers in containers

Growing Cayenne peppers in containers is not very complicated, however it is a long process and there are a couple of things you need to get right. It takes for about 3.5-4 months to have the ripe fruit from the moment of planting the seed, so it is not a fast growing plant.

Here are few stages of my pepper:

9 days after seeding

15 days after seeding

1 month and 2 weeks

13 days later than the previous picture, few days after the transplantation

same flower 10 days later

progress of the little pepper after 20 days

2 days later

another two days have passed

only 1 day difference

and after another two days it is ready for harvesting. 4 months after planting

The two most important things you need to get right are temperature control and pests.

Temperature

• seed germination is 15 C with a maximum of 35. The optimal temperature for germination is between 27 and 29 C
• best growth and quality of the plant occurs at a minimum of 18 C and a maximum of 26. The optimal range is between 21 and 24 C
• fruit set fail when temperatures drop below 13 C
• blossom drops at temperatures above 32 C

Here is how one round of my sprouted plants looked when I had it below 15 C:

Pests

The main issues I had were with aphids and caterpillars. Caterpillars can attack them very early on, so you need to check the leaves of your plant all the time:

Young pepper plant attacked by caterpillars

I tried to manually control the aphids and kill the eggs on every leave. I equally used a soap+alcohol spray, but it damaged the plant more than the insects. So I used insecticide in two consecutive weeks and the issue disappeared.

Fertilizer

I personally used a universal fertilizer and did not pay too much attention to this aspect, and it still worked. The formula is 7+5+6 (Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium) and other micronutrients in very tiny concentrations like Magnesium, Copper, Iron Zinc. It worked perfectly fine for my pepper, they started to have fruits 3 months after germination and I still had chubby little peppers 3-4 months after the first fruits:

My conclusion

Even though it took 4 month to harvest the first fruit, I kept producing fruits for another 4 month. Peppers are one of the most rewarding plants to have, it is incredibly nice to have them fresh every day, directly from your garden. And you don’t have to worry if you produce more than you can eat, you can dry them and use them in all your foods or make some home made spicy salsa with some apple juice, garlic, ginger and tomato paste:

If you are curious how rewarding planting tomatoes was, you can check it out here.