Kitchen Garden Forum

I have four overwintered chilli pepper plants, they continued fruiting till about November, they are in an unheated greenhouse in large pots of compost, they still have some fruit on which has dried up, but I use my chillies dried anyway, so I shall pick them off.

Will the plants revive if I top them up with some fresh compost, trim them up and wrap them in poly bags and keep them moist I wonder?

Dear Compo,
trim the plants down to about four inches and wait until there is new growth before doing anything else. No sense in going to a lot of effort if the plant is actually dead.
Regards sally Wright.

OK, but no harm in a bit of fresh compost on top and a drop of water I guess?

I,ve revived chilli plants by pruning them fairly hard back, stripping away about half the compost and repotting them with a few chicken manure pellets mixed in with the new compost. The roots will be fairly thick and matted by this stage so don,t strip more than half of them away or the plants may not recover.
I will very surprised though if your plants have actually survived through after last week’s ferocious sub zero temperatures, even in an heated greenhouse especially as they are really hotter climate plants. You might want to experiment and bring a couple of them indoors for a few days to check out what happens in a warmer temperature. As Sally has intimated they may actually have died or be dying as a result of those low temperatures without their appearance changing desperately immediately.

They did not survive, however, the chilli fruits that survived the winter obviously shed seed and I now have new plants in the pot, which I top dressed with some mushroom compost and they are away now, so not a bad result!!

Just shows that nature can disappoint and then surprise In quick succession. One of the joys of being a gardener. A small surprise or delight is always round the next corner.
if I were you, to give the seedlings the best chance, i,d remove them and repot them In completely fresh compost to give them the best chance, rather than topping up an existing pot with fresh compost.