sweet peppers inside for winter?

[David Auker]

It's starting to be freezing temperatures here, so I've dug up and potted a bunch of sweet red pepper plants that I started from seed last winter. They had a good growing season, and I can't bear to see my babies die out there!

I understand that peppers are a perennial, so if I succeed in keeping them alive until May, it seems I would be way ahead of a normal planting of young plants with these oldsters??

Any experience out there in wintering over sweet pepper plants? I half-tried once, and about all that happened was I was growing aphids inside :-(

David

[spamtrap]

I'm growing peppers inside this winter, but they aren't over-wintering. I started these from seeds this fall (indoors). So no aphids.

So far, they're doing very well. They're blooming now.

If they continue to do well, next spring I could transplant them outdoors (sort of the reverse of what you want to do).

Pat

[Steve]

I have a pepper plant in a pot. I've had it for 5 or 6 years, maybe more. I've decided to toss it on the compost pile and not save it another year. I don't live in a good pepper growing climate. I thought leaving it in the pot and starting the season with a bigger plant might give me more peppers. That didn't work too well. I actually got few if any peppers during the summer but usually got several small ones when I brought it indoors in the fall. Try it, they are fairly easy to winter over indoors as long as you can provide enough light to keep them going.

Steve > It's starting to be freezing temperatures here, so I've dug up and potted a

[Sam]

I overwintered a sweet pepper last winter but it did not do very well, I had peppers about all winter but it was ones that were already on the plant when I put it in the greenhouse. I put it out in the spring and it did not produce well. The new ones I started from seed had more peppers and earlier than it did!!!! Hope you have better luck.

[Pen]

I took peppers indoors too. To get rid of aphids, put the pot into the bath tub once a week and gave the plant a shower. Large fruiting peppers stops producing indoors but small fruited ones like Jingle Bells can still produce a handful of new fruits through the winter. You need a really big pot, atleast 5gal, and a sunny window. The only problem with keeping a potted pepper was that after 2 years, the plant became woody and slowly died on its own.

[David Auker]

After a winter inside, how did your plants produce, when you put them back outside for their second season?

[Pen]

The large fruited peppers were not very productive compared to younger plants the following season. Jingle Bells had shot up to almost 5 feet during the winter and was quite productive the following summer.

[David Auker]

I wonder how sweet peppers fare in a climate where they get to "self-actualize" as perennials, with no hint of killing frost? How long do they live? Maybe they start losing productivity compared to younger plants?

David Oregon

[Frogleg]

Yeah. Seems to me many definitions of annual are frost-dependent.

Here's an interesting site related to peppers:

[David Auker]