Pepper plant came in a fabric pot—remove or plant the pot?

hi, everyone. my jalapeno germination attempts didn’t go well this year, so i purchased a bonnie jalapeno from home depot. (by the time of purchase today, the plant had reached a foot in height and had flowering buds, huzzah.)

and i’ve encountered something new. this plant came in a small fabric pot, with a few roots poking through. all my previous plant purchases came in disposable plastic pots, so now there’s a gargantuan neon question mark floating above my head.

do i remove the fabric, or do i plant the whole shebang, including the fabric pot? thanks in advance for the guidance!

Roots can grow through the fabric but can slow them down a bit for sure. Transplanting out of the fabric is a pain as it rips roots and causes some transplant shock and is slightly difficult. Some cut them out, some peel the fabric pot out others plant them.

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I would probably take a razor blade (or the sharpest knife you have) and put 4 long up and down slices on each side of the pot - just into the fabric. This will better let roots escape. Removing the fabric could do a lot of damage to the roots.

I’ve used jiffy peat pellets before which were contained in similar fabric-like material and could tell that it really hampered growth versus the normal transplants.

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I do just that.

They Say to plant them pot and all, but I’ve seen too many pot-bound plants where the roots never escaped

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I suspect it is safe to follow the directions, but wish you had two plants to compare results. Bonnie is a huge company and a veritable monopoly that has single handedly multiplied the costs of purchasing starts, but I trust that they have researched the consequences of the fabric pots. They are still trying to expand the monopoly. You could always clip a couple openings if you want to play it safe. The roots will find their way.

I start a lot of my plants but don’t have time to start everything in my garden. Luckily I have a small, independent green house grower that still sells 6 packs for a reasonable price as does Agway.

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I would try my best if not to remove then shred it as much as possible vertically and in the bottom. Once I lost a honey berry because I didn’t know it had this fabric pot inside. It was shipped to me in a plastic pot with soil, I didn’t see much root when I removed the pot, and just planted it. There were three of them, two made it, third died in the middle of the summer. When I pulled it out next spring I found the roots bounded in the 2 inches fabric pot that was inside that soil it was shipped in. The roots just never found way out and continue to grow in circles…

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thanks for the advice, everyone! y’all are a good deal more helpful than google, whose topmost search results pointed to growing cannabis in grow bags. :laughing:

while transplanting the jalapeno this morning, i finally noted the small print on the plastic wrapper around the plant:

Biodegradable pot by Jiffy. Pots made in Canada. Plant this pot. It will become part of the soil. No pots for trash.

i didn’t want to retard root growth, based on the advice here, so i peeled away as much of the jiffy pot as possible, almost entirely from the lateral parts. the bottom of the pot was thickly interwoven with roots, so i left the bottom alone.

there were several spots of fungal-appearing white growth on the sides of the jiffy pot, so i had more reason to remove what i could.

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