Peppers grown commercially in greenhouses are usually in 5 gallon size pots. Smaller pots require more frequent irrigation. The bag system actually uses 5 gallon black plastic bags, holes in the bottom, filled with organic matter. Most peppers are perennial, as with indeterminate types of tomatoes. I have a 4 year old tomato in my greenhouse and a two year old pepper, all still producing well. Basil could be grown in much smaller sized pots since the daily water use is much lower than pepper or tomato.

No problem, GHer. ;-)

Sorry about the size. Personally, I hate dinky little pics that are hard to see. And I don't like it when they exceed the page size because it messes up the text wrap. I have always gone with 600x800 because it seems like a happy medium.

I have grown GH peppers in 1-3 gallons pots and by production was better with the larger pots.

You are right, quite hot today and no rain in sight.

OK, thanks. I'll see if I can find something in the 5g range at the cheapo Dollar store. Right now they're in 2 and 3g pots and two already have small peppers on them. They're doing better than the ones in the garden even though I water them all.

As for the tomatoes. Would it be better to take cutting and root them, or grow them from seed? These will be the ones to spend their lives in the GH.

It's sundown here and 91F. I don't know how people survived here before the days of A/C. I think the heat is getting to my geraniums as their flowers and leaves are getting smaller and smaller as the summer wears on.

GH- After 17 straight days over 100 deg. here, no rain since April and none expected until November, your weather sounds like a nice change for me. To help with your cutting vs. seed question, the cuttings are a great, free, source of tomato plants. Unless you have noticed a virus in the mother plant, the cuttings will be exactly like that plant. If you are growing a tomato in the greenhouse, you should remove all the suckers that would form lateral branches anyway. These suckers are very easy to root and will quickly become a good source of plants. Right now I have 30 plants in the garden, all from suckers rooted from my one greenhouse grown tomato plant.
p.s. as a commercial grower of geraniums, if the leaves are getting smaller, it is from water stress. Give them more water more often.....

My GH is so hot even with a shade cloth and fans running that I can't use it. It in the mid to high 90s here day after day. I had to bring my Impatiens cuttings into the air conditioned sun room. We're in a severe drought here. Last good rain (over an inch) was back in March.

I will take the cuttings from the tom' plants as the plants look healthy. I see no sign of disease or insect pests.

As for the Geraniums - the soil seldom gets the chance to really dry out since I water them sometimes twice a day. They're on the side deck and get full sun a good part of the day. They're fertilized on time also, but the leaves are losing their deep green color. Flower heads are smaller than normal. There are no insect pests. Could it be the heat?

We had to put down our four-year-old Hungarian Yellow pepper plant last year. It was a very sad time. :-( He was still hanging on, but not very attractive to spend another winter indoors. It was overwintered in a 10" pot, proof you really don't need that much, but larger than that would certainly be better. We'd let it dry to the point of losing leaves sometimes. Man, towards the end, those peppers were hot!

-Ed

GH- As I mentioned earlier, it is over 100 deg. here most days, so heat directly is not the problem. However, my plants are under 50% shade cloth, so if yours are getting too much direct sun, even in a greenhouse , that could definitely bleach out the color. It you "only" have 90's temps., and the shade cloth and fans are not doing the job, do you have a misting system? This combination for me provides about 8 deg. lower inside vs. outside temp.
Good luck on the tomato cuttings, they are amazingly easy to root..

I'd be thrilled if my peppers produced for 4 years. :) The ones outside in the pots are doing so much better than those in the garden. I think I'll just move them into the greenhouse in October. I just picked up the rest of the compost and topsoil to start getting the 20g bins ready. We're going to put 2 peppers or 2 toms or 3 Swiss chard in each one. I was unable to find anything in the 5 gallon range. The HD doesn't sell the commercial type pots anymore.

I don't have any plants in the GHs for the summer. The geraniums are on an open deck facing west. Some are out in the open next to the GHs. All of them look pathetic as described. Last winter they looked fantastic in the HFGH with huge leaves and blooms. They were bushy and full. I slowly acclimated them to the great outdoors in April. Slowly the new leaves became smaller, paler and the flower heads smaller as well. Care was otherwise the same. What a dissapointment. Only the scented ones look the same - busy and healthy with large leaves.

I have no misters in the GHs because we can't get water to them. Too much rock at the surface and my husband doesn't want a hose left with pressure on all the time. I wont go into the hoses that split causing us to have a huge water bills before we were aware of it. We were fortunate to be able to bury the electric cable from the garage. The waterline is much further away.

When it's in the 90s here the GHs can reach 105 to 110F. I got the shade cloth at HD so don't know what the % is.

When siting mine, I went with a balance between close proximity, access to utilities and sun. I put it less than 50 feet from the house. That way, one roll of hose and underground wiring was enough to reach.

It's downhill from the house for easy draining of the water lines, and I was able to follow an old and abandoned outside kitchen drain line to lessen the trench-digging. The remaining 25 feet of trench was hand-cut through the clays and outcrops of slate rocks to reach the gh.

I buried two ordinary mid-quality garden hoses for both hot and cold water in the same trench, along with the electricity. I have that wired as an extension cord and it plugs into a GFI outlet located under the house. I usually leave the hot water side off and disconnected, but it's there if needed for some early spring gardening. I use it so seldom, if the cold hose fails, I can switch it over to the second hose and keep on a-going.

I did not heat tape or protect the lines and they're only 6 inches or so deep. Draining before winter is a must, but you'd be surprised how cold it must be before they freeze. The hose has frozen several times with no apparent ill-effects. The water gets only warm to the touch on a hot summer day. I should add our well system has very low pressure, under 30 psi, which no doubt helps to minimize any damage from heat-related pressure builds.

I've left these hoses buried year-round, this is our fourth season using them. They're so shallow that once they fail, all I have to do is pull them up, clean out the trench and replace.

I plumbed in water shutoffs both under the house and outside of it for easy winterizing. The taps are right below our kitchen sink, so plumbing was a no-brainer. The electric panel is just one room over, so that job was also simple to do.

As to your own specific problems, there's a few possible solutions I can suggest. If burial of the hose won't work, there are high-pressure-rated garden hoses. Keep the hose in shade, maybe mulch it, or cover it somehow. Remember to shut it off at the house and go back to the gh to relieve the pressure from the hose, saving it into a watering can so it's not wasted.

If you're forgetful or it's a long trudge back to the shut-off at the house, put a timer on the spigot at the house that automatically shuts off the outside line after your usual garden quitting time and turns it on prior to your morning waterings. Some fancy timers have multiple on/off settings. There's also cheap clock timers that run for a preset period, say an hour or two, to let you do your chores then it shuts off afterwards. That's just one trip to the hose connection per watering session.

Always fill a large watering can before finishing for the day so you have something handy for an emergency spot-watering.

For a too-hot greenhouse, maybe several panels can be removed in the summer, even an entire wall or two and replaced with screening or just left open. That -will- help!

A small utility pump, a large water barrel and a timer could provide a remote misting or even watering system.

Rain gutters could be installed on the gh or house as well, collected in barrels and plumbed to where needed. No pressure, no worries of high water bills if a leak occurs.

If there's no rain, just fill the barrels from the house spigot and use the same timed pumping system either way.

For the ultimate in convenience, there's floating stock tank water shutoffs that work like your toilet. Get some rain, it fills the barrels. No rain, the house waterline fills it up. The pump and timer handle the watering either way. Another timer limits how much house water is used. You sit on the deck and watch for problems.

There's all sorts of DIY plumbing answers for many of your watering problems. Just cruise the aisles and see what you can graft together.

For planting, Ace Hardware has 5-gallon pails. Professional painters and drywallers get their stuff in the same thing. Restaurants get their pickles and condiments in buckets.

Good luck! Once you're done, you'll always appreciate the automation!
-Ed

Our GHs are close to the house but the waterline is almost 4' down and it's almost all limestone rock between it and the GHs. I have a 75' hose from one spigit behind the house. I turn it on to fill the watering cans and to water the plants outside but near the GHs for the summer. Burying a hose wont work because of the rock.

Since I water at different times a watering timer wouldn't work. I know nothing about plumbing and the supplies that go with it. We do check before dark that all three spigits are turned off. Also, my budget is limited. That's why I bypassed the 5g paint buckets/pails - they're $4.99 each. I'll use the old free ammunition cases with holes drilled in them and old 3g nursery pots someone gave me. :)

Removing panels in a Rion isn't like removing them from a HF. It's not easy or practical. The Rion has no gutters. Since it's plastic we don't want to screw any on in fear they'll split the plastic. As for a misting system. That too can be a problem here because of the minerals in the water. Everything gets a white coating on it from misters. I don't think the plants would appreciate that much but can't find out how harmful it is.

Automation takes knowledge and money, mainly money. I wish I could run a water line into the GH, It's a PIA to carry 2g watering cans in the winter when the hoses are not hooked up or they freeze. This winter I think I'll try filling a trash can in the GH and fill the wc's from that.

Anyone have trouble with aphids on their peppers? If so, what do you do about them?

This coming winter will be my 1st experience with growing them in a GH. I haven't had any insect pests on peppers so far (in the garden).

Aphids are relatively easy to control on GH peppers. The safe products include insecticidal soap, horticultural oil and neem. Based on my experience, I would try these controls in that order. The key is to spray them when they first appear, not when they are out of hand. The other chemicals mentioned in the link do work, but are not necessarily registered for everything you might have in your greenhouse.

Here is a link that might be useful: GH aphid control for pepper