Got a couple pepper plants that I'm transplanting for houseplants. One is a clone of a clone of (et cetera) a cross between a moderately hot and a more mild - I think an orange habenero X cayenne but I'm not positive. It's a cute little thing. Looks like a dwarf, short and branchy. Don't know if that means the rumor about multi-"generation" clones exhibiting signs of dwarfism is true... or if it's because it's growing in a little 12-ounce plastic drink cup, lol. The other is an orange habenero that I picked up on a whim when passing through the parking lot of one of the many chain department stores that dot the landscape like warts on an otherwise attractive woman.
Pretty late to stick them in the garden, so they'll be houseplants.
On the way out of the store's garden area I spied part of a six-pack of gypsy pepper plants in their trash pile. Picked them up as well, but I don't know if I'll save them or just toss them on the compost pile. Three of the four made it home (the other one was so crunchy that it broke) and after soaking the pack for a few minutes in water they no longer look dead (they now look... half-dead
). But they're still pretty wounded and I have two matching containers for the other two and not much open space right now. So they'll have to really perk up before I decide to keep one of them.
I guess if they look ok in a week I could always stick all three of them into a small planter, twine their stems together, and consider it a long-term bonsai project. Peppers make excellent bonsais but unless you start with a mature specimen towards the end of the season, it's more a multi-year thing to get the true "miniature 150-year old tree" look with the exposed weathered roots, thick woody "trunk," etc.
Is anyone else growing peppers as general houseplants? As a bonsai?
What about other "traditional fruit/vegetable garden" plants as houseplants? I'm not all that concerned with a consumable harvest - although it never hurts - but am interested in plants that produce some fruits/vegetables (or at least the initial flowers) for the overall look of the thing.
Pretty late to stick them in the garden, so they'll be houseplants.
On the way out of the store's garden area I spied part of a six-pack of gypsy pepper plants in their trash pile. Picked them up as well, but I don't know if I'll save them or just toss them on the compost pile. Three of the four made it home (the other one was so crunchy that it broke) and after soaking the pack for a few minutes in water they no longer look dead (they now look... half-dead
). But they're still pretty wounded and I have two matching containers for the other two and not much open space right now. So they'll have to really perk up before I decide to keep one of them.I guess if they look ok in a week I could always stick all three of them into a small planter, twine their stems together, and consider it a long-term bonsai project. Peppers make excellent bonsais but unless you start with a mature specimen towards the end of the season, it's more a multi-year thing to get the true "miniature 150-year old tree" look with the exposed weathered roots, thick woody "trunk," etc.
Is anyone else growing peppers as general houseplants? As a bonsai?
What about other "traditional fruit/vegetable garden" plants as houseplants? I'm not all that concerned with a consumable harvest - although it never hurts - but am interested in plants that produce some fruits/vegetables (or at least the initial flowers) for the overall look of the thing.
