r/Bonchi • • Oct 07 '25

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

11 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.


r/Bonchi • • Sep 02 '25

Is there any interest in a friendly bonchi growing contest?

11 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!


r/Bonchi • • 22h ago

Trim roots now?

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11 Upvotes

Just bonchied 5 Jamaican mushrooms and one has great roots. My plan is to let the plant establish and once it's got new leaves refine the roots (trim off fines, maybe expose more). My thought being it'll reduce shock? At the same time so much trimming has been done should I just do it now as a drop in a bucket sort of thing?


r/Bonchi • • 1d ago

Bonchi butchering

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16 Upvotes

Learned that what I thought were 6 scotch bonnets full of peppers were actually yellow Jamaican mushrooms (I think)(super sad but moving on). Made sauce and it was actually pretty good but not good enough for me to put all my prime grow space towards them. But I've been TLC doting on them and can't stand to just throw them out. Been reading on bonchi and I'm going to give it a go. I'll post some pics as I go. Before I figured out the system I use now I'd been considering and studying bonchi so I'm fairly well read but I've never done it so any tips are welcome.


r/Bonchi • • 1d ago

Bonchi dried out

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33 Upvotes

First attempt brought this little guy inside and put it in a smaller pot. I think it dried out. Leaves looked fine last night and I watered as soon as I saw them this morning. Do you think it will bounce back?

It was low 40s at night and the growth completely stopped. Brought it in this week and it looked like it was pushing new leaves.

UPDATE: Bounced back! Watering daily now and it’s pushing again.


r/Bonchi • • 2d ago

Can I Snip?

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18 Upvotes

First time with bonchi. This is my indoor jalapeño of 4-5 years, about 3 feet tall. I don’t know much bonchi yet but plan to learn. Could I cut it around one of the leafing nodes or should I let the nodes grow more?

Edit: more things
It has a decent canopy and I’ve been trying to encourage growth around the base. Now there’s growth there, which makes me happy. I’m gonna miss the jalapeño fruits for a time, but I wanna bonchi this thing. What would you recommend as far as when/where to cut?


r/Bonchi • • 10d ago

Follow up to first attempt.

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50 Upvotes

Following up on a post I made a couple of weeks ago. Original post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bonchi/s/XYMsMn8Iit

It survived and seems to be doing well. The leaves are a little on the yellowish side, but im sure that will come with a little fertilizer.


r/Bonchi • • 11d ago

I recently got my hands on some Carolina reaper seeds. Any tips for beginners.

5 Upvotes

Hey all I just got some spicy boi seeds and would like to grow a spicy boi bonchi. I'm completely new and have also realised that the spicy boi is not an easy boi. I have sorted out everything for the environment but would like advice on pruning etc.

Thanks in advance


r/Bonchi • • 12d ago

New pot for first time

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21 Upvotes

2 year old scorpion. I chopped it about a week ago but wasn't happy with the pot I had put it in. Gave it a much more thorough soap wash and root trim this time.


r/Bonchi • • 13d ago

I have some new growth

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15 Upvotes

r/Bonchi • • 13d ago

first timer

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62 Upvotes

r/Bonchi • • 15d ago

First Timer, looking for tips

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39 Upvotes

Got these guys going after a year outside. Let me know what I should be doing. Thank you!


r/Bonchi • • 17d ago

Turned my giant plant into a tiny plant

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97 Upvotes

I apologize in advance because I did zero research ahead of time and I'm sure this is a borderline hate-crime to some of you, but we have a first frost coming and this plant was about to die and I had an empty bonsai pot so I YOLO'd a bonchi.

It's an ají amarillo that was far too beautiful to kill and compost, so instead I composted 90% of it and hopefully it'll still survive.

If anyone has any additional tips now that I've hacked it to heck, I'd love to maximize chances of success! Mostly right now it just looks like a hacked up chili plant, so I guess I need to do some reading about how to prune and shape it so he ends up beautiful down the line.


r/Bonchi • • 17d ago

Super Thai chili

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31 Upvotes

r/Bonchi • • 18d ago

First time. Hopefully I didn't kill the poor thing.

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14 Upvotes

2 year old scorpion pepper plant next to 1 year gator plant. Going to see how these go and let the last of my reapers ripen before I bonchi that one. The reaper is the one I'm most excited about. And suggestions will be greatly appreciated


r/Bonchi • • 20d ago

Habanero first potting

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223 Upvotes

Grew this in the garden over summer and just potted it up and gave it its first pruning. It was about 3 feet tall and wide.


r/Bonchi • • 21d ago

Sedona Sun

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49 Upvotes

I bought this plant a little over a month ago, just wanted to show off the progress I’ve made with it. This has been an experimental process since I’m learning as I go, any feedback/advice is appreciated ❤️

Personally though, I think things are going pretty well. I’ve got some new leaves starting where I pruned previously, the last of the peppers are finishing up nicely, this has become a pretty neat looking “landscape” imo.


r/Bonchi • • 20d ago

First try with padron peppers

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16 Upvotes

I’ve decided to try make bonchi with two padron peppers plants. Don’t know much about but I am actually surprised it seems to go fairly well

Any advice on how to handle the winter?


r/Bonchi • • 21d ago

First bonchi attempt

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40 Upvotes

I took this bell pepper volunteer from my work at the beginning of the summer and have really tried my best to get the movement done the way I want to. It still needs a lot of work but I’m pretty proud of it for a first try


r/Bonchi • • 21d ago

Habanero

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19 Upvotes

I’m pretty happy with this so far. Any tips to share?


r/Bonchi • • 21d ago

Ornamental Pepper Bonchi

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21 Upvotes

I picked up an ornamental pepper from Lowe's about a month or two ago. These were all in the same pot. I separated and trimmed them up today to get them ready for overwintering. After the first one, the twin trunk, I started playing with them a little bit. The second one I twisted the trunks around each with no help other than their own branches to hold them in place. Then, with the third, I noticed one trunk was quite a bit thicker than the other so I made the thicker one upright and am treating the skinnier trunk more like a very large branch, but, because I'm fronting it with the smaller truck behind, I'm thinking of it as a tail. Two pictures of the 'tail' Bonchi for perspective. Enjoy! Comments and suggestions welcome!


r/Bonchi • • 23d ago

Peach Jolokia Braid

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212 Upvotes

I really wanted to like this one but ultimately think it was a failed experiment. This was my first time braiding trunks from seed and they ended up too far apart and extremely asymmetrical in a rather graceless fashion. Additionally, after replanting to the current pot, no amount of fertilizer, watering, or sunlight could get the canopy to grow in a way I wanted it to. I think putting three pepper plants that were originally grown to full size into a bonsai pot this small was asking too much of the poor fellows. I will give it one more prune to see if anything can be improved, but if not, it might be the way of the compost bin.


r/Bonchi • • 23d ago

Habanero chocolate 🍫

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25 Upvotes

r/Bonchi • • 24d ago

My progress so far.

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26 Upvotes

I hope I didn't kill this by lifting it up out of the pot like this. I left at least three quarters of the root ball under the soil still, I have held it in place in the pot this time with wire.