Kitchen Garden Forum

My sweet pepper Marconi Rosso is still alive in the unheated greenhouse, with 2 peppers very slowly ripening on it still. I have cut back watering & it has shed a fair few leaves but stems are green & healthy. My question is will a sweet pepper behave like a chilli if I can keep it going? Should I take the 2 peppers off it to allow it to conserve energy & should I cut it back? It only has about 3 stems, but they are about 2 foot high & quite thick. Is there a point where I should cut it down to?

I have successfully over wintered chilli's but loads of stems on them so I just cut away with fingers crossed & got lucky! I'm willing to give it a try but space is limited & don't want to waste valuable space - but of course still a long way until I have to put any new ones in there so have a bit of time on my side.

Westi

Westi,I would be tempted to let the ripening peppers take their course and the prune the plant back fairly drastically unless you have conditions somewhere they will ripen equally well off the vine without wrinkling too much, and then prune the plants back fairly hard to the first sideshoot or a lower leaf shoot and repot in fresh compost. The plants will take a little time to recover but generally will behave like chillies and start shooting and flowering again when they're ready. I find whitefly attack is the main enemy with overwintered chillies and peppers at this time of year so cheek them regularly.

Thanks Primrose!

I will certainly try to mother it through then.

West