It gets colder where I live, usually not below low 30s. I find that peppers and tomatoes will overwinter if left outside and sheltered if I get a frost. They will not always thrive, put on flowers and fruit etc unless I have a warm winter. But usually, they will live to see another Spring =)

Yes, the polar vortex did a lot of roses in this year. So don't feel bad about losing yours. Sometimes things just happen. As for bringing them inside the house I do NOT recommend it. They will not be happy and you stand just as great a chance of losing them inside as you do outside in the garage. They won't get enough light and the humidity will not be right for them. They just fail to thrive inside. Put them in a protected spot in the garage, where they won't get blasted every time you open the door, up off the floor on blocks and water them some every month through the winter. It's still the best chance they have of making it. We can't predict the weather but hopefully it won't be as bad as last years.

Can I use an 8 inch (20 cm) plastic pot to grow basil inside as a "houseplant" during the winter? IÂve read the threads here about overwintering inside & making new plants in the spring from stem cuttings. I have some basil plants that have not flowered yet as they are in partial shade. IÂm planning to take stem cuttings from them to make my new "houseplants" since IÂve read that flowering changes the taste. Or would new plants started from flowered stem cuttings taste like all new plants? I need the smallest, lightest weight pot possible since I want to put the pots on top of my kitchen cabinets under the skylights. IÂm going to keep the pots outside in the dappled shade to start them, gradually move to sun & bring them inside in the late fall when the temps get down to about 40 degrees F (4 C). I donÂt have space for grow lights & my region has more light, heat & humidity than anyone would ever need. Is this a good plan? Any & all advice greatly appreciated.

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