I bought a bag of Miracle-Grow organic fertilizer this year and it is just chicken manure, lots of nitrogen. Be careful with it. We had a big hoo-hah about Miracle-Grow on Tomatomania recently and I was a bit of devil’s advocate. Some people really flamed me. I am well aware of the damage that chemical fertilizers do, but I think the key word is moderation. There are times a little chemical fertilizer does good, and I know of no evidence that in small quantities it does any harm. In general organic methods are much better from the standpoint of nutrition and the environment but if you add a teaspoon of miracle grow to a gallon of water and put it on your seedlings when you set them out, or use miracle-grow potting soil in your containers, you are not murdering the earth, IMO. Now factory farms that use chemical fertilizers, insecticides and herbicides indiscriminately and literally by the ton, that’s another story. But I doubt that many people on this list are farming 1000 acres.

I’ve got a couple of green pepper plants in a pot. But I’ve noticed that the only peppers being produced are really small and misshapen. I’ve never tried peppers before, so I’m not sure if it’s the way the first fruits look, or if I need to pull them off, or let it go, or what.

We’re growing gaint marconi peppers for the first time this year. They first appear wadded up, almost like a spit ball, than straighten and lengthen as they grow, eventually ending up looking like proper peppers. My other pepper varities don’t go through this ‘ugly duckling’ stage. Since they are getting identical care, I’m chalking it up to the type of pepper for now.

Hello everybody, I am new to this group and to container growing. I have managed to get a few large ex food containers from local restaurants, and have some tomato plants which are ready to plant up. The containers are quite large, 15 litre or about 4 US gallon. They are food grade plastic I think were used for cooking oil. I have scrubbed them all out.

1. What size holes and where (sides & bottom?) should I drill into my containers? And at the risk of sounding like an idiot, what drill bit should I use???

2. I have some French marigolds that I would like to plant with the toms, has anyone found this effective for pest control?

3. How many tomato plants to a pot of that size? Just one seems to be recommended by most sites.

I assume you are just using the containers as a regular pot and not as a self watering container, correct?

If so, you might want to stop a minute and think about making it a self watering container (see the files section). I made my first batch out of buckets a few weeks ago and it was not nearly as difficult as I was afraid it would be. I think you should consider this option first as it will make a big difference in where you drill.

If you don’t want to make a self watering container, the holes should go on the bottom. I make my holes with the 1/4 inch bit but if I were going to do it again, I’d probably go up to the 1/2 inch. It doesn’t take a lot of room for water to flow out so I erred on the side of making them small.

My 2 cents – drainage holes should be slightly smaller than a pencil – for a bucket that size I would put 6 holes on the bottom and 4 holes on the side about a half inch up from the bottom.  Only 1 plant per container of that size -at least for a tomato. Marigolds I have no idea.

Hello everybody, I am new to this group and to container growing. I have managed to get a few large ex food containers from local restaurants, and have some tomato plants which are ready to plant up. The containers are quite large, 15 litre or about 4 US gallon. They are food grade plastic I think were used for cooking oil. I have scrubbed them all out.

I have 6 sweet peppers, the Italian horn type, planted in 5 gallon buckets. Since the pepper’s roots did not need all of the potting mix in the bucket last year, and I had 15 big bags of shredded mulch from the Boy Scouts on hand, I put a few inched of shredded mulch on top of stones in the bottom of the buckets. Then potting mix and peppers, and after a few weeks a little mulch on top.
The peppers started well and looked great for a couple weeks.
Then I was out of town for 10 days, it rained most days and I asked a relative to water every day that there was not rain.
When I came back, the peppers looked ‘unhappy’ and started dropping leaves. I resumed the watering, the peppers are blooming and even a small pepper on one plant. They continued to look ‘unhappy.’

I decided to repot them, perhaps the mulch was the problem.
The mulch in some pots was growing tiny mushrooms and some pots had a white fibrous material.

I used all new potting mix, removed all the mulch, kept the biggest root mass that I could.
I had potted eggplants the same way, they are a bit yellow and small, little growth, so I repotted them too.

Lesson learned: do not use mulch to fill in a too big pot.
2nd lesson: peppers and eggplants do not like shredded mulch.

My tomatoes look great, almost explosive growth, they did not have any mulch. This is my second year of growing tomatoes, peppers and eggplants in 5 gallon buckets.

Tue Jun 16, 2009 10:04 am (PDT)

Ok the mulch is most likely not the problem.  It sounds like they need nutrition.  So start feeding them.  Once they start producing fruit they need to be feed more often.  You know when you see that a tomato plant will produce 20 lbs or what ever of fruit a year and you don’t get what they claim.  It is because we don’t feed enough.  Also with all that watering or rain while you were gone nutrients were being washed away.
That white web stuff on the mulch is actually good fungus.  And the mushrooms indicate to much water.  At least your plants did not die while you were gone.  Looks like your relative did a really good job of watering.
Then I was out of town for 10 days, it rained most days and I asked a relative to water every day that there was not rain.
When I came back, the peppers looked ‘unhappy’ and started dropping leaves. I resumed the watering, the peppers are blooming and even a small pepper on one plant. They continued to look ‘unhappy.’

I decided to repot them, perhaps the mulch was the problem.
The mulch in some pots was growing tiny mushrooms and some pots had a white fibrous material.
y question for the group is: should I abandon these peppers and start with new plants, if I can find new pepper plants? Or do you think that the peppers and eggplants will recover?

Lesson learned: do not use mulch to fill in a too big pot.
2nd lesson: peppers and eggplants do not like shredded mulch.

My tomatoes look great, almost explosive growth, they did not have any mulch. This is my second year of growing tomatoes, peppers and eggplants in 5 gallon buckets.

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