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Report on Over Wintering Peppers

16 years ago

Well I feel like I can make a preliminaty report on trying to over winter peppers.

I split them up into 2 groups. My thought was to keep one group cold but not frozen and not really growing but just in a state of suspension. Well they basically are too cold and it looks like mold might be affecting the plants. of course the roots are cold too. I have them in the attic window. They look close to dead right now. Maybe the plants will remain alive and stage a comeback in the spring. I will try to hold them to the spring and outdoors into the sun and warmth. so a final evaluation is not ready as yet. but so far it looks poor.

the other plants are in the windows around the house with moderate temperature. These are doing much better. They do tend to dry out but the leaves are still alive on some.

I still have a long stretch to summer so this is a very early report. I am disappointed with the attic attempt because I can put more plants in the attic and it is out of the way. but it just does not work.

I will add the footnote that a few tomato plant attempts are having the same result. but with tomatoes I can tell they are dead. Not sure if the peppers can make a comeback from death looking.

I can postulate that the peppers need to be kept moderately warm. Probably the roots need warmth. the leaves just do not like the cold. I would not be surprised if the roots died from the cold and wet when watered.

I do have living plants in the house and no big aphid problems so far. How is everyone else doing on over wintering.

PS

all my plants were growing in pots before bringing them indoors. I did not repot anything. It might help to repot as John does. I am also using outdoor compost soil and not sterile potting soil.

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Comments (7)

User
16 years ago
I had two groups too. The first group of 10 were pruned radically, both tops and roots and put in fresh Pro Mix in the garage.

Later I radically pruned some others ( but not the roots)that were inside and they stayed inside.
CAP 503 and Rocoto,Giant Red Peru

On December 1 it got below freezing in the garage so I brought the garage plants inside and since it stayed very cold decided to just leave them in the back bedroom--temps in the lower 60's but under lights.

On December 12th I took these pictures:

Rocoto, Giant Red Peru-pruned but had stayed inside -the one in picture above

Rocoto,Giant Red Peru 2--from the garage

At this point, all of the plants that were pruned but stayed inside are doing well. Of the ten that were in the garage until December six are showing good regrowth, one has just begun, two look like they will eventually produce leaves , and one looks dead ( Trinidad Scorpion-FG)

Here is a picture taken today of the Rocoto,Giant Red Peru that above has only the tiniest leaf

And CGN 19198 which just put forth a tiny leaf

So don't give up on those in the attic don't look so hot.
vance8b
16 years ago
dangould
Keep going. If you quit now you won't know if it really doesn't work. If it does work, you'll be set for next winter.

fiedlermeister:
Wow, that first bareroot picture is amazing! I had three plants that I had hacked back to knubs based on info from this forum, but I never knew that I could try that! My three hacked back plants sat out last night and it got down to 20 degrees F, so they might be dead. I will let them be until spring to see what happens. Next year I will try what you did with the radical root and top pruning and fresh mix. Can I assume that one could overwinter in fresh mix in rather small pots to make moving them around easier and pot them up in spring? Thanks.
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I overwinter peppers routinely, and have had the same good experiences. You basically start out in the spring with a fully mature plant, and by the time the warm weather comes on, it's already frantically producing peppers. Around here, I can be harvesting in April. Of course, peppers are *extremely* frost intolerant, and protecting them can mean a lot of work. Some winters, we never even get a frost, which makes it easy. This last winter, we had hard freezes (down to 22F). I had the peppers piled high with foam pads and sleeping bags, with a light bulb underneath. I still lost a few branches. In retrospect, it might have been easier just to start with new ones. Just remember that the bigger they get, the harder they are to protect. A couple of years in, the plants have stems like small tree trunks (almost an inch in diameter at the base), which you can see in the picture from the OP.
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Hi Allen, I overwinter peppers in our oversized garage (we had to build it big so I'd have room for all my gardening "stuff"), so space isn't really an issue and I don't cut them back. When I move them into the garage, I line them up in front of the third garage door so that all I have to do is open up the garage door on sunny days and they get some sunlight. This means they don't go dormant and drop their leaves until either late Dec. or early Jan. Once dormancy has set in and the leaves drop, then I cut them back by 1/3 to 1/2. At this point, I'm not opening the door to get sunlight because (a) there's no leaves to use that sunlight for photosynthesis so it isn't necessary, and (b) it is too cold to expose them to outdoor temps. Generally, mine stay fully dormant all of Jan. and part of Feb. and then they start leafing out and blooming. (Sometimes they start that in Jan.) At that point, I try to get them either some natural sunlight every day, or I at least leave on the garage lights (they are those long fluorescent shop lights) all day so the plants have at least minimal light. I have them in a light, soil-less potting mix that drains very well, and I don't water them very often because they don't use a lot of water in winter. If you keep them too wet, they can die. In a good year, blooms set any time between mid-Jan. and mid-Mar. and I am harvesting the first early, small peppers in April or May. If you are keeping them indoors, if they have enough light and warmth, they won't even go dormant. I haven't tried moving them directly from the outdoors to indoors inside a heated house (our garage is not heated, but it is very well-insulated), but I think if I was doing it, I'd feel comfortable cutting them back back 1/3 to 1/2 even if the bottom of the plants don't have a lot of leaves. I consider overwintering peppers an experimental thing. All of them likely will not survive, but most will. In their native climate, they are perennials, so all we have to do is give them some protection from winter weather and we can keep them going for years here. My oldest peppers that I overwinter will be going into the garage for their third year in a few weeks. Before you bring them inside, spray them off really well with a garden hose to knock off any insects that might be hanging out on the foliage, and then watch them carefully for aphids or whiteflies or whatever. Once they're inside, there are no beneficial insects to control pest insects, so you have to stay on top of insect issues and remove them yourself if they show up. I don't usually have aphids or anything on my overwintered plants, but often just as soon as I move them outside for some sun on a warm winter day, aphids somehow find them. If I am patient, a week or two later, lady bugs show up to eat the aphids. How the aphids find the pepper plants in the winter is beyond me, and how the lady bugs pop up in late winter to eat the aphids escapes me too....but somehow it happens. Dawn
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User
16 years ago
Yes, I had them in smaller pots than they had been and could have used even smaller pots. At some point, of course, they will again need bigger pots. I need to find a place where I can hold them in the 40's--I think that way they could stay with little maitainence and use little space.

I'm betting your plants exposd to 20 degrees are dead. Did you bring them in or are they still outside? One year I tried putting some pubescens outside when thre temps were near 30 with the idea of killing the aphids and then bringing the plants back inside. The plants died from the exposure.
naturegirl_2007 5B SW Michigan
16 years ago
Fiedlermeister, your pictures and reports on your "experiments" are very helpful. They show that overwintering several peppers wouldn't require huge amounts of indoors space and is indeed a possibility for me next season. Gotta admit tho', that I loved your earlier photos with full grown pepper plants all over your home in the fall!

How much water do you give your plants? Can you let them go quite dry and hold them in dormancy?

I'm curious to see how much earlier they will fruit next season compared to young transplants.

Do you think one could get along with minimal lighting if the plants are kept cool? I've got a college student's bedroom that is empty and minimally heated most of the time. Bet alot of trimmed peppers would fit in there! She would have a fit if she came home to visit, tho :)
User
16 years ago
naturegirl

I don't let them dry out.I think this would kill them as I don't think it's true dormancy but only slowed growth. Again, I am not a biologist and this is only my thinking on this and the reason for the experiments.

In the past, overwintered plants have produced earlier than those started in the new year. I do think that your bedroom idea would work. Until the garage got too cold and the plants were brought in they were in cool conditions with minimal light and my plan was to carry them through the winter that way. My idea is to drastically prune them and then give them minimal heat, water, and light to just keep them alive and barely growing. Again, this is all an experiment and I don't know enough biology to know if it will work. It seems to have at least worked for a couple of months.
aka_peggy
16 years ago
Hi Dan et al,
I wintered over 5 types of chile peppers last year and attempting to do it again this year. Some of them look a little stressed at this time while others have peppers developing. So far so good!

I've kept them in a well lit unheated room where the night temp never falls below 40. Day temps get up in the 60's if the sun is shining. No problems with aphids on the peppers cause they seem to prefer the green onions plants that are nearby.

In another month I'll know if they survived another winter
User
16 years ago
Update

Out of 16 plants, 3 are showing no signs of regrowth. Here are a few pictures:

Rocoto Giant Red 12-12-07

Rocoto Giant Red 1-2-08

Rocoto Giant Red 2-17-08

Don't have before pictures of these

Trinidad Scorpion 2-16-08

Chicanna Purple 2-17-08

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