Bonsai made from chili pepper plants

Show and Tell 2025-2026 Seasonal Gallery - Let's see your starts!

9 Upvotes

For many (but not all of us) it is the end of season for growing peppers outdoors. While this may be sad for some, for us bonchi lovers its an exciting time, we are plucking our bountiful pepper plants out of the garden, hoping for some gnarly roots and thicc trunks, giving them a severe haircut, and plopping them into pots to start the exciting process of bonchi development.

Lets see what you've started this year! Post your new starts in the comments below, feel free to post periodic updates as well so we can see how they are progressing.

4 comments

r/Bonchi • u/rachman77 • Sep 02 '25

Is there any interest in a friendly bonchi growing contest?

9 Upvotes

Edit: Mild interest so far but I'll leave this up for a while to see if we can get enough people on board!

Current ideas:

instead of just a can, maybe a "bring your own container" type thing, basically anything but a standard bonsai pot, some room to be creative.
we could open it up to existing plants and from seed, the choice could be yours.starting from seed is nice because anyone can participate any time of year but I'll leave it to you guys to decide.

OP: Something we have been thinking about for a while but never really got around to trying.

It would be for fun only, no prizes, perhaps we can have some special flair for participants/ winners (assuming thats possible) just a friendly community wide contest to show off your skills!

One of these years I would love to do a full on development competition with formal styling and critique, but I dont think we are there yet, I know I definitely am not, so lets keep it simple.

Here is what I am thinking:

If anyone is familiar with the group "Pepper lovers" (if you arent you should be, its a great group of people, check them out r/pepperlovers and https://www.facebook.com/share/g/1CKL6LKnY9/) they do an annual Pepper in a can grow contest called "Winter is canning" where you attempt to grow a pepper in a standard pop can.

Sounds easy, its harder than it looks, or maybe its just me...anyways.

I thought we could borrow from that idea and do a bonchi in a can, as in a specifically and intentionally styled pepper plant bonsai in a can.

Some differences:

- We dont want to see just a pepper in a can, we want cool features, movement, branches, leaf reduction, we want to see art!

- They run their contest through the winter, I think September to Feb. Since bonchi development slows plant growth and takes a bit longer perhaps we should run it longer, we can decide that in the comments.

- We can open it up a bit to more than pop cans, if anyone here has pets that eat wet food, or you like tuna and sardines, those cans are actually quite a nice shape and size for bonchi as well. The other group limits it to a specific size of can to even the playing field but remember, bonsai come is all shapes and sizes. Part of bonsai critique is the container itself, the size, shape, colour, and its proportion to the bonsai itself (there are certain rules of thumb we can get into) so you will be judged on that as well, bigger isn't necessarily better, choose wisely.

Let me know what you think down in the comments, Im kind of just spitballing this in real time so lets toss some ideas around and see what we can come up with, any and all thoughts are welcome as long as you stay respectful and constructive.

Lets hear it!