Kitchen Garden Forum

A bit too late in the season now, but the advice with photos in the link below might be useful for anybody growing chillies and thinking of having a go at trying to over-winter them to get an earlier crop the following year.
http://www.thechilliking.com/preparing- ... -chillies/

I've over-wintered chillies for 2 or 3 years now and do find that using this method gets me a small new crop at the tail end of winter, but whitefly always seems to overtake me in the end.

I do something similar, but don't reduce the stem so much. I suppose cutting so much off the top would get rid of a lot of places where whitefly could lurk so you start with clean new growth.

I find you can get good crops for two or three years like this, but then you are better starting with fresh plants.

You definitely get a nice early crop doing it this way.

I have never tried this but will certainly give it a go this year.

Would this also work for sweet peppers? I have found some references to people in the US managing to keep plants going for several years, but nothing for the UK.

Regards, Diane

I've not tried it with peppers but as chillies & peppers belong to the same family I'm sure it would work. The only reason I've only tried it with chillies is that I don't have a greenhouse, so indoor space on my lightest window sill is fairly limited, especially as use fairly large pots. I think it's important to remove as much of the old compost from around the roots as possible. I also add a few chicken manure pellets to give the pruned plants a good new start, and they do take off again quite quickly, despite the lower light levels in winter.

Thanks for the advice, Primrose.

I'm very lucky to have both a greenhouse (inherited with the house) and a conservatory (new addition) so indoor, light space is not an issue. I moved my pepper plants to the conservatory before the severe weather last November and managed to coax them to ripen and harvested the last just after Christmas. I didn't think to save the plants so my trial will have to wait until next winter, but I will definitely give it a go. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Diane

I tried it with sweet peppers, but they tended to go mouldy easily. They seem to need more warmth than the hot ones, so perhaps I didn't keep them warm enough.