How To Bonsai A Pepper Plant (Bonchi)

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At the end of the growing season, we often have to say goodbye to many plants that served us well over the summer. Here in Connecticut, pepper plants do not survive outside with the freezing cold winters. Turning your chili pepper plant into a bonsai tree (informally known as a bonchi), is a unique and rewarding way to overwinter one of your favorite plants.

Bonsai pepper plant starting out
Early bonsai pepper plant.

Bonsai is the art of growing miniature trees in small pots or other containers. The world bonsai comes from the Japanese words bon, meaning pot, and sai, meaning plant.

The most popular species of trees used for bonsai are maples, junipers, and ficus. Bonsai trees are grown in containers that restrict their root growth. This, along with selective pruning, results in a smaller tree that is proportional to the size of its pot.

The leaves and branches of a bonsai tree are trimmed to create a desired shape. Bonsai trees can be shaped into many styles, such as formal upright, informal upright, slanting, cascade, twisted, and broom style.

If you get really ambitious, you can even do multiple plantings, or create miniature landscapes around the trees. Bonsai is an art, and the freedom is yours, so donā€™t be afraid to be creative!

Why should you bonsai your pepper plant?

Pepper plants are great candidates for bonsai due to their thick, woody stems that resemble the trunk of a tree. Given the right conditions, youā€™ll even be able to harvest fruits from your bonsai pepper plant!

It’s also a unique way to overwinter your pepper plants and keep them from season to season.

Today, Iā€™m going to show you how to bonsai one of your chili pepper plants from start to finish. I decided to use one of my personal favorite plants from this prior season, our Quintisho plant.

Materials needed

Supplies needed for pepper bonsai
  • A suitable pepper plant – For best results, choose a plant with a thick, sturdy stem and healthy growth. While you can use a plant that was grown in-ground (and dig it up), I find it is much easier to use a plant that was grown in a large container or grow bag. I also prefer to use a pepper variety that has small fruit sizes.

    Biquinho, Thai chili, or other ornamental varieties work very well. I suggest choosing a variety with small fruits that are well-proportioned to the plant, and so the branches can support many fruits at once. Of course, you can choose to grow a bonsai chili plant and not allow it to fruit at all.
  • Container/pot – Choose a container you find aesthetically pleasing. Be sure the container has proper drainage. The drainage holes should be covered with mesh to keep the soil in place while still allowing the water to drain out.
  • Soft copper wire and wire cutters – Bendable copper is used for training the branches into the desired shape.
  • Soil – When making a bonsai chili plant, avoid traditional “bonsai soil.” We have the best luck with normal potting soil (fresh and sterilized), along with a handful of perlite for drainage. You can also use a mix of traditional potting with some bonsai soil added in for drainage, but don’t overthink it.

Tip: Remember to provide your bonsai chili the same temperatures as its native environment (ideally between 70-80Ā°F).

Step 1: Choose Your Plant

Pepper plant with thick trunk, a good candidate for bonsai

Before starting your bonsai project, youā€™ll need to choose which plant youā€™ll be using. It all starts with a full-sized plant that has reached maturity. This is why bonsai is a great project to take on at the end of the growing season. Choose any full-sized pepper plant that you have grown in a large pot outdoors.

Step 2: Harvest The Peppers and Trim The Plant

Pepper plant being trimmed up for bonsai

At this point, remove all the remaining peppers and leaves from your plant. Then, trim back the plant, leaving only the main stem with a few healthy offshoots. This is a painful process, but it must be done!

Step 3: Rinse And Trim Roots

Plant roots being rinsed off for bonsai plant

After removing the plant from its container (or from the ground), give the roots a good rinse. Remove as much of the soil as possible to avoid bringing any insects inside. I also like to spray the roots with diluted neem oil or insecticidal soap to be on the safe side.

Using sharp scissors, working in a circle, trim up the root ball of your plant. Keep the larger roots while trimming back the smaller ones. The end result should be a rootball that is about the size of your bonsai pot. Decide which roots will remain above the soil line for a dramatic look.

Step 4: Pot The Plant

Bonsai plant being potted

Place the plant roots into the prepared soil in its container. Be sure the plant is upright and stable in the chosen pot. You can use wire to stabilize the plant and prevent it from tipping over. For soil, we liked to use fresh sterilizing potting soil (just run some boiling water through it and let it cool) and a handful of perlite for drainage.

Step 5: Give The Plant Plenty Of Light

Now, itā€™s time to practice some patience. It may take several weeks to see any new foliage emerging from your bonsai. Place the plant in a sunny and warm spot, or under grow lights.

Pepper plant bonsai progress

I recommend ā€œquarantiningā€ the plant as well, keeping a close eye for insects for at least 2 weeks after the move indoors. You never know what may have been living in the soil while the plant was outside. Even though you gave the roots a good rinse, you can never be too sure.

Step 6: Fertilize Your Plant

Bonsai pepper new growth

Since the soil is so limited in volume, you’ll need to fertilize your bonsai chili plant regularly. Use a fertilizer that has plenty of nitrogen. This will promote leafy growth, which is exactly what you want, especially early on. Avoid over-fertilizing your plant, and try to keep to a regular schedule, giving it just enough to survive.

You do not want to treat your bonsai plant the same way you would a pepper being grown outdoors for high-yielding fruit (heavy feedings, more often). The smaller roots and smaller plant size means less nutrients are required. You can dilute the fertilizer at about half the normal strength, and keep an eye out for signs of nutrient burn.

Maintaining and pruning your pepper bonsai

Pruning is the process of removing parts of the plant. We do this to keep the bonsai compact, promote fresh growth, shape the tree, direct growth, and to keep the plant well-ventilated, which discourages disease.

This process happens in nature to trees and plants with the change of the seasons. However, we have to manually prune our bonsai to keep it maintained and compact. If youā€™re not sure what shape you would like to keep your bonsai chili plant, it can be helpful to draw a rough sketch first.

Tip: you should always focus on the development of a strong trunk first (branches will come later).


I hope this guide inspired you to make your own bonsai pepper plant. The process is a little messy, but it’s a really fun project and your plant can survive a very long time if given the right conditions.

Let us know if you’ve ever bonsaied one of your chili plants and which variety you chose.

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5 Comments

  1. Hi,

    At the end of the winter, can a bonchi be returned back to a large pot and encouraged to regrown into a fuller fruiting plant?

    1. Yes absolutely. It may take some time to see the plant recover as it needs to grow new roots and establish into the larger body of soil, but it should grow large again

      1. In fact I read from a few people doing this to fatten their trunk on the bonchi and it has the nice side effect of giving you an early productive plant cause the rootsystem is already fairly decent and healthy.

  2. I’m trying to start bonchi from diavolicchio, black prince and aji dulci at end of season in october. But i read different techniques for starting bonchi and overwintering. Is there really a difference regarding light and temp, water and fertiling needs.

    1. The main difference is the size of the container and how warm you plan to keep it. For overwintering, you’ll want to keep it cool, and in a big of a larger pot than a bonchi. For a bonchi, the goal is to grow the plant rather than hibernate it, so you’ll want it warmer. Bonchi are also kept in smaller pots to maintain a compact plant size and shape. All of these factors lead to more frequent watering and fertilizing of bonchi compared to overwintering (which required very little watering and no fertilizing).

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