That's great! I plan to grow lots of peppers this year, hot ones and may try to protect them over next winter. Thanks for sharing your success!

I potted up a bunch of mine back in November. I would bring them in the garage when it got below 40. Some didn't make it but most of them did. This is the first year I've done it, so will be interesting to see how quickly they make pods.

I'm not surprised, chilipetins (the teeny-tiny peppers that are hot enough to blow the top of your head off) do that without help in San Antonio...at most they die back to the roots. I had one that I managed to keep alive (in a pot) for maybe ten years, until it just died one winter. I think it just "got old" and died.

Good luck with your peppers...and enjoy the early ones!

I was told that peppers were one veg. that I should start again from seed rather than try to carry over. Apparantly they are more susceptible to disease. Now, I have done it and not had problems, but if someone has the opportunity to do both: keep some and start some new ones, it might be wise to do both and keep them separated.

c

Now harvesting. Two banana peppers on April 1 (no foolin'), and many many more on the way. Flowers by the bazillion. Bushes are deep green and about two and a half feet high, with half-inch "trunks". No special treatment. Just tied 'em up, and gave 'em water.

All my second season peppers went in the ground Sunday. They have loads of flower buds. I am hoping for a nice early harvest before the heat gets here.

Not sure if this is relevant, but the many banana peppers I'm now harvesting are getting unusually large. When these plants were producing last year, I was getting loads of, say, 4-inch peppers before they fell off or started to go bad. Now I'm getting huge ones. 6-inches or longer! I had never stuffed a banana pepper, but I'm doing that with these! Is this a second-season property?

Maybe it's because they are fully mature plants that are now producing, which they weren't last spring. Of course, I wasn't getting peppers this big off of them in the fall either.

on the hot pepper forum here on gardenweb, many "chili heads" overwinter their plants.

They claim the yield and size of the harvest increases each year.

I believe this holds true for all varieties (sweet, mild and super-hots).

Thank you! The key google terms are "chile" and "overwinter". There has evidently been a great deal of thought expended and experience on this! Everyone talks about the yield increase, but I haven't seen anything yet about the size of the fruit.

I've been growing peppers for decades, and no one ever told me about this!!

Same thing here with over-wintered Cayenne, Banana, and Jalapeno peppers. I guess that the bigger root systems can support bigger fruit. A great old-time radio garden show host said years ago that as the repeatedly over-wintered pepper plants developed thick, woody 'trunks' that they would become less fruitful.

Just to report back. After a hugely productive early summer, the two-year old peppers shut off in the summer heat. Last harvestable pepper was first week in August. Now they're covered with new flowers and tiny peppers. I may try to keep these guys going for a third year!

Years ago I kept a bell pepper in a pot for 8 years and it produced each Spring but I had to put it outdoors in order for it to fruit.

I currently have peppers, from the Tobasco factory on Avery Island, in pots for their third year and Ghost peppers just starting their second year as they were planted late in the season last year.

I have an ornamental round pepper also growing in pots in their second season. They stay very small.

I have a potted cotton plant in it's seventh year. It also producesd bolls each year.

I've done this with papaya trees, castor beans, and some annual flowers.

Kt