Last Fall, there was a post on this group about digging up hot pepper plants for replanting in the Spring. I mentioned this to my wife, who plants a variety of hot peppers every year. She thought it would be an interesting experiment so she dug up three habenero plants and two serrano plants after they died back. These were kept in the laundry room all Winter, where it's a few degrees cooler than the rest of the house. As planting season approached, they were put under the grow lights and watered regularly.
Of the three habenero, two survived. They were dormant all Winter. They sent out new sprouts through the soil from the roots but nothing came from the old stems from last year. They're doing very well.
Both of the serrano survived. They put out a few small leaves from the original stems early in the Winter but those didn't grow much at all until Spring.
All four surviving plants are out in the cold frame at the moment and will be replanted in the pepper bed before too long. If they do anything out of the ordinary this year, I'll post it here.
Paul