Dear angierainbow83, Please think about the info from Jodi and Al. I add my own story below. Since thinking through my own experiences will help me too, I hope you don't mind. I believe for me, I need to separate the garden beds from my containers; just as a two bedrooms can be used differently while still being a room, a separate approach to garden beds (to use Al's words, more "organic") vs. containers (more "inorganic") is still gardening. Good luck on your journey! Over the past few years I seem to be suffering from a case of harvest envy. Due to space and location, I do not have the ability to grow vegetables in the ground due to shade, but I do have a very sunny spot where containers work fine. I have "successfully" grown various vegetables (and am lazily including tomatoes in this category). I say "successfully" since I have never been able to come close to the level of harvest that neighbors get when the essentially identical plants with similar methods EXCEPT the plants are grown in the ground. In fact, I can say this with with confidence since I have provided them with their plants. I have experimented with various combinations of top soil, organic potting soil, compost and small gravel. (I won't go into nutrient supplements I have tried.) I have used about 15gal lightly-colored plastic pots raised off the ground. Given my growing climate, young plants move into these pots in early May and typically are taken down sometime after Columbus Day. The plants are still producing, but the colder temps negative influences many of the types I grow. In the case of eggplant, tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers, for example, my plants are 5-6ft tall and produce a crop not quite sufficient for a small family throughout much of the season. When I take the pots down at the end of the season, I typically find the exterior soil to be damp/dry while the center below the stem and near the main roots to be very wet. Further, there are many small roots near the soil surface, possible due to the thin mulch layer I applied (thinking I needed more moisture retention). There are some larger roots that spread in the pots, but not a tremendous amount. The best fruiting, distribution and size of roots was in the year where I only used organic potting soil without a mulch cover. Although I can't say with 100% certainty that by making the soil more organic I caused this problem since from year to year I changed conditions (and growing conditions change too), the evidence is pretty well stacked against me.

BUMP Plant out time is here. I like the older threads rather than starting a new thread. There are already some useful information there. This thread dates back to 2011. Since then there has been quite some changes in container growing medium concept. In the past MG potting (and similar brands) used to be the potting soil option. They are mostly pet moss based. Al (Tapla) has made a significant contribution by developing and introducing 5-1-1 mix, It is 5 parts pine/fir bark fine , 1 part peat moss and 1 part perlite. The amount of peat moss really depends on the structure of the pine bark one uses. I, myself, get finer pine bark that does not need any peat moss. So I skip PM and instead I add DE (floor dry) for better moisture retention. DE also facilitates drainage after it is saturated. I have experimented and found out that one pound of dry DE absorbs one pound of water. So my 5-1-1 is 5 parts pine bark, 1 part DE and 1 part perlite. ABOUT CONTAINER SIZE As mentioned bigger pot is better. That is especially true if you have a long growing season, like in CA and FL where growing season can be 8 to 9 months. But in our PNW practical pepper growing season is about 5 months. Last year I used pots ranging from 2.5 to 5 gallons. Most did ok. This year I will use no smaller than 4 gallon nursery pots (= 5 gallon liquid). I got some of those for free from a landscaping crew in my neighborhood.. I also got reusable grocery shopping bags which also are 4 gallons in volume. I prefer these 4 gallon containers over the 5 gallon HD /Lowes buckets which are not very nice looking. Those buckets actually hold no more than 4 dry gallons. Are you ready to pot up ? Seysonn

Tom if they were not dwarf bush hybrids I would only have a max of two with other things like basil, and other herbs planted in with them. The one on the bottom right is just about as big as it going to get. The center is a Husky Cherry Red. It will get near to what the bottom right will for size. The one in the middle is a Patio hybrid. Top right is Arkansas Traveler. In the past the ones I have grown get tall, and not that busy, though the trade off is some tasty 'maters that will ripen in the heat here. Top left is a Black Prince while it is classified as indeterm. In this area they tend to get about 4 to 5 feet tall, and not real bushy. Though I will prune if necessary. If the bed becomes crowded I will be doing back flips down the block.(LOL) As for air flow the wind is a constant here. 20 mph is a light breeze most days. There tends to be calm for about an hour just before dawn most times. If the wind is not blowing in the day get to cover because it is going to rain hard and fast. The peppers in there are compact Gypsy peppers. They get to about 3 to 4 feet tall, and are pretty compact. The ones that get evening shade here will still set peppers if night time lows are below the mid 80's proving they get the evening shade they will set even if the day time highs get to the triple digits. They were the only peppers I grew last year that I got peppers off of all summer. The 4 hail storms had them to the bare stems. Two weeks later they were covered in leaves again.

top view of my japapeno bought it about a month ago with just two flowers and no pepers on it this are all my plants togheter took them indoors due to bad weather this is my cherry pepers have been about two weeks in the hydro set up this is my cayan also two weeks in the hydro set up got it with just one tiny chili wich has grown to triple the size a side view of my banana pepers finally taking off also about a month old just like the jalapenos but the jalapenos were bigger when i bought them My jalapenos again the set up had to be painted black was growing alge but the black paint fixed the problem my banana pepers when i first got them