Thank you for only talking about what was necessary and not making me listen to a bunch of nonsense that had nothing to do with the subject of the video I really appreciate that. That will definitely make me watch you more.
Last of my peppers for this season Jack Frost’s visit last night was the reason White by morning, then black by day The leaves now limp presage decay So into the composting bin they go Those now spent plants of this past summer What a bummer But wait! For upon the garden’s earth I’ve just spread My home made compost from last year’s dead Come next spring when plants emerge Upon these organics they will splurge As nature’s cycle begins anew What once was frost, now a summer night’s dew Nature rewards with more than she’s given When from just a seed life is driven And so it is of this gardener’s pleasures That we reap as we sow of these veggie treasures I love watching your how-to videos on peppers so just wanted to share one of my gardening poems I've written. Keep the great videos coming.
Best video on overwintering peppers that I have seen on TH-cam...and believe me, I have searched for and watched PLENTY. Thanks for the time , effort, and thought you put into making this fantastic video.
Love this. I brought in one of my jalapeno plants for three years in a row. The stalk was as big as my thumb. It produced more peppers every year. Unfortunately, the third year it bit the dust as I was not as diligent in caring for it. Thank you ... have subscribed.
I'm in Maine and folks in cold climates, this is key info. I had a power outage in the cool room I was overwintering my peps in, and lost all but one plant -- but that one plant, oh boy was it a real producer in its second year. This year I'm overwintering as many chiles as I can fit and hoping I can keep the conditions roughly correct for six months. Hopefully next year I will have a lot more chiles in year 2 and get that production boost.
I bring in some of my herb plants by repotting into garden soil and pots that fit indoors. What I do to prevent bugs is simply dry the blossoms of my mums, which I pinch off as they begin to die to encourage further flowering. Those dried blossoms contain pyrethrins. I just sprinkle the dried blossoms around the soil and no more bugs ; )
Interesting. I looked at my largest mum that had lots of blossoms and all the early blossoms are gone. It's like someone cut all of them. Do you know if animals like to eat them? I know that groundhog comes around but never saw him go after mums.
I successfully overwintered Jalapenos, Giant Marconi and bell peppers last winter. I did have a problem with gnats till I got Neem Oil spray. I've seen videos suggesting a 1 inch layer of sand ontop of the soil to stop them from being able to lay eggs so going to give that a try this year. I kept my plants in a north facing window (I don't have a grow room/garage or greenhouse) so they never got direct sunlight and gave each plant a half cup of water every two weeks and all but 1 plant made it. Great video and very informative.
I live in So Cal. We rarely get a frost, and if we do it is a short time. I grew my 36 pepper plants in containers with indoor potting soil. So after seeing this video and reading the comments (thank you) I will prune them, treat the soil, cover with sand and place under the shade tarp. Thanks for the video and wish me luck!
Hi from central Portugal; Just letting you & anyone who's interested know, I left last years green pepper plants outside in the soil over this last winter..All the plants are now looking green & healthy. I did take the extra precaution of sheltering the roots from any weather with some light boarding.
Trimming the leaves back 3+ days before uprooting will increase your survival rate because it gives the plant a chance to heal before the next trauma (uprooting). Love the video though! I'll have to try this, although I have 7 months of snow in northern Canada, so I'm not sure how long it'll stay dormant.
mine did well by not cutting back this month n even had peppers growing through winter but had mine in pots to begin with but cut back roots n put some in smaller pots, they need sun in winter n water occasionally, I usually have around 7 I do this to each yr
I got a very late start on my peppers this year as the first set of seeds did not germinate at all (too cold). By the time I got more seeds and replanted, it was June. My peppers are just now blooming (first part of September in zone 8b, October 15-ish first expected frost date). So . . . I'm going to try overwintering for first time. I have 18 plants to repot and bring indoors, quite a daunting task for sure! Thanks for the helpful video.
I'm also in zone 8b ( SoCal high desert) and we have a few days down to 29F and several days in the 31-33. My pepper plants in the raised beds suffered severe damages to the upper branches and leaves. Only the trunks and lower branches are still green. Some peppers I have in pots, I moved them to the southern wall and they have lots of sunlight and a bit of heat from the house so they are still survived, the fruits are still on, just look sad. I don't bring them inside because I am also having other fig cuttings, tomato cuttings ... to the south windows. The peppers I have this year are just regular varieties like green bell peppers, jalapenos ( mild variety which is not my preference) and some sweet peppers I bought from the stores, so not that valuable to bring inside the house with risk of pests, plus I haven't had time to the unheated green houses are still not properly set up. I'm starting many seeds from the rarer varieties like carolina reaper, chiltepin, komodo dragon, cubanell, savina,.yellow, purple and white bell peppers. They are all harder to germinate and propagate, so I'll probably use this overwinter method next year as this is a very effective way to prevent pests get inside the house.
@@sandrajohnston9745I’m in this same situation in June 2024. Figure it’s a great opportunity to practice this! How did things turn out for you? I’m in 8a. Happy growing!
I have had success in growing peppers indoors purely by trial & error. First time, since they did not yet bear fruit when the frost came, I brought them indoors and had peppers in January. Last season, I put them all in pots, and brought them inside to a cool but sunny room. They began to get lots of aphids, so I sprayed them with castile soapy water to keep the plants alive. In spring, I put them outdoors, and my hot ball pepper plant has blossomed beautifully into many little red peppers. I am so glad I watched your video. Now, I will prune them all back, and bring them indoors to winter over. Thank you!!!
That is exactly how I discovered peppers being able to overwinter and now I have had some of my pepper plants for a little bit over 5 years the longest one I ever had was 7 years and like he said sometimes it does give peppers in the winter I never put mine in any special light or anything it just gave me peppers sitting in the sunny window I live in North Dakota so that's exciting because we have such a short growing season
Love your pepper and your pepper will love you back! Most folks don’t know what a pepper plant can do and how happy they can be in a sun room even here on planet Sweden.
Hey guys love this channel. Was going to say instead of stressing the plant so much to get the bugs out, try soaking it completely under water for an hour. It won't hurt the plant but it will get the bugs and eggs.
@@PepperGeek I've found it works for everything I've tried it with. Nothing really has ever shown any dislike for a full emersion. Neem is good but I find a castile soap like dr bronner has a better effect for longer.
@@JRRedDawg Hi, do you immerse the leaves & stems as well as the roots when you do it this way? I know plants 'breath' so wondering if upper part of the plant remains above water or can it be fully submerged? Thanks!
@@samjones3106 Ya the don't mind mind. Its like when you pull a wilted plant from the root or make a cutting. When you put them in fresh water they perk right up within the hour. Roots just swell. As long as they have good drainage when you pull them out. If I'm doing a full root dip and not just the plant itself. I'll rinse the plant and gently emerse the whole for 15 20 minutes. Has always worked really well for me in pest control. If the plant is suffering or I'm transplanting for overwinter or in the ground for sprin I use a few caps full of superthrive, a nontoxic vitamin solution, and submerge the pot or root ball completely. It works for me. I've always been happy with the results.
I'm a new gardener. 👩🌾 last year I harvested a few peppers. I was able to overwinter two pepper plants last fall. This year I have about eight different pepper plants. I have so many peppers this year. I'm going to try to overwinter all of the plants this winter.
Be sure to do a good job at rinsing and getting rid of bugs and their eggs from the roots before moving it indoors, like he has explained. We made this mistake last last Fall, and all winter and early spring we had fungus gnats throughout our house and infesting all our other indoor plants. They are also called drain flies and they lay eggs in organic material and the larvae feed on it and then become tiny black flies that get in your face and behave like fruit flies. Hard to get rid of, but we bought a product called Mosquito Dunks and soaked a Dunk in the watering can over night and used the water to water all the indoor plants each week for a month or so. It worked! Mosquito Dunks are harmless to humans and animals. They only kill the larvae of flying insects which eat it.
BT works good too. Bacteria that starts with a T. It's a natural product. A bacteria naturally found in soil. It kills all kind of bugs including fungus knats. All the rage.
@@keithshergold9257a combination of both is best, dunks to kill the larvae in the soil and the sticky traps to get the adult population under control. I’ve used mosquito dunks before and it works (take it from a fellow skeptical lol)
This was my first year growing peppers in zone 4. We are preparing for the first hard frost and im too attached to the plants to toss them in the compost. Planning to bring most of them indoors, some dormant and some to see if they keep fruiting. Thanks for the video!
I'm on the edge of 3 & 4. New to the region, not the state though. I'm attached to all my plants which look just as great now as they did in June when I planted them. My neighbors & local food pantry have delighted in its bounty. I've even grown flowers that supposedly won't grow here. I thought I'd lost my bell pepper in June's flood, but I placed it in a cup in my heater room and its actually crowned. I've also learned about doing this with eggplants & tomatoes. I love experimenting & with 4 months of outdoor gardening...my garden needs all the blessings it can receive. It will be high 30's tonight & 27 Thurs. night. Take care, ~ Covah
Overwintered for the first time this year, just put the plants back into the sun a few weeks ago. Out of 11 plants, 10 made it so pretty happy with that. We only have light frosts, so I left them potted in one of those cheap plastic greenhouses. For reference here in Melb, Australia we get 850-1000 chill hours and the capsicums did fine in that temp range overwinter (0C - 15C is our night/day temp range during winter). If you get below 0 a lot I would take them inside, ours did ok with about 4-5 days of below 0C.
Thanks for this. I was sitting here wondering how I could keep them at 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Glad to know that they will probably be okay with much colder temps.
I'm in a similar location, I got a couple of hard frosts this year and I thought it had nuked the plants. All the leaves scrunched up. Do you think with similar heavy pruning they'd survive over winter unprotected? Or would I need to make a poly tunnel or similar for them. I plant in raised beds.
After reading up on overwintering, I decided to give it a try. I have 17 potted plants, 7 reapers, 5 ghosts, 5 scorpions. This is the first year I've even grown hot peppers... and I kinda like the challenge to see if I can get them thru this. So, today I brought all of them inside. I live in south central Missouri. The temp tonight is supposed to be 28F. I don't want to lose them, I'll see how it goes. The plants produced abundantly and I'm looking forward to keeping them alive for a repeat performance!
We have 2 green houses full of our peppers (2 Carolina Reepers, 4 Red Ghost, 2 Chocolate Ghost, 2 Green Bell, 2 Red Bell, 1 Gypsy, 1 Red Habanero, 2 Orange Habanero, 1 Chocolate Habanero, 1 Scorpion, 1 Perconcini, and 1 Jalapeno). This is our 1st year having any type of garden or greenhouse. The plan is to insulate the greenhouses and keep our peppers producing year round. We are in the Mid-Atlantic where winters can get cold. So we also have heaters we will be running. We've done ok over the summer, even revived some plants that struggled in our house (we bought them online in February and kept them indoors). They were reduced to nothing but sticks when we brought them outside in late April. They had been doing fine, then lost all their leaves. My husband thought sure they were dead. But I knew as long as there was life in the stem, they could recover. Now they are all producing beautiful hot peppers! I'm taking cuttings to start new plants for the spring as well. We're learning as we go and hope we have sufficiently prepared for the winter. Our greenhouses should still get sunlight over the winter. Do you think we will still need grow lights as well? We have 1 set, but will need to get another set for the 2nd green house if the natural sunlight is insufficient. They should receive light pretty much all day. Of course, the days are shorter!
I'm in Virginia and I am in a similar situation. What size is your greenhouse and how are you keeping it warm? I have a 10x20x7 green poly greenhouse. I assembled it in early March 2021 so this will be my first full winter.
I’m definitely doing this coming winter as the pepper plants I have are quite abundant. I have 14 pepper plants in self wicking 5 gallon buckets and I’ve had a most bountiful year so far. I have Anaheim, poblano, red and yellow bell, jalapeño and Tabasco. I’ve picked at least 20 pounds and canned 2/3 that much, I’ve eaten the rest. I love peppers.
I’m using my peppers in flower arrangements. I already made a ton of hot sauce and dried more than I can use for years. I’m gonna try to overwinter them for the 1st time.
When I lived in Palmdale California thankfully our Winters aren't that harsh so I heavily mulched my plants and put Home Depot buckets on top of them. During the day I would take them off, and put them back at sunset. I was so happy when they came back in the spring! Now I live in Las Vegas Nevada and I have a container garden so I just moved the buckets inside of our shed that has Windows during the winter.
I’ve been overwintering my Jalepeños for several years with great results! The first year I had growth and even a few peppers and the plant was fine. Last year I put them in the basement and only got some growth right as spring was starting. It’s worth the effort.
Thanks for the ideas and suggestions. I will try this. My peppers are doing great this season! The only drawback I can see is that my living room is already jammed with bananas, guavas, citrus and more. A few more plants and I won't be able to walk in there. 😄 Also - a tip: Get a Felco #2 pruner. You'll never look back! It's the cadillac of pruners. Will set you back about 70 bucks but with care you can leave it to your grandkids. Sharpening blades is easy. Replacing blades is also easy. Cheers.
I just came across this video. I’ve heard of overwintering pepper plants but never knew how it was done until now. Surprised that all of the leaves are removed. I have hungarian hots, pepperoncinis and jalapeño peppers that I am going to “try” to overwinter. Thanks to your video I am comfortable trying it. Thanks!
I really, really, really want to thank you two for never starting a video with "What's goin' on, guys" and for never having your mouth stupidly wide open for your intro like TH-camrs often do. It is the most ridiculous behaviour and I find it insulting when TH-camrs do that. It is as if viewers are too stupid to pay attention unless they make it looking shocking. I appreciate that you respect the intelligence of your viewers. Please continue to keep it real and down to earth (pun intended).
Very timely video! I have been planning to prep my peppers for overwintering, and this was just the motivation I needed to get it done, thanks! 😁 I felt like Morticia with the roses though LOL
I live in Northern California and last year I cut my peppers down and left the outside since our winters are mild, but not one survived...so this year I will be over wintering some of you super hots like my reaper, 7- pot bubble gum,SRPs,mad hatter and some rocotos. Thanks for a very informative video.
I’m going big for my first time overwintering. I have 3 jalapeños, 2 ghost peppers, 2 habaneros, 1 Tabasco, 1 poblano, 1 Carolina reaper and 1 spicy bell pepper. Plus I have some seedlings that I’m trying to develop far too late in the season.
@@PepperGeek I’m definitely having fun, plus my 4 year old son loves it which is an added bonus. Just had my first Carolina reaper seedling sprout yesterday 😃
I’m in the exact same situation as you; I’m trying out overwintering for the first time this winter with 18 peppers total! 6 bell peppers, 2 cayennes, 2 jalapeños, 2 poblanos, 2 red chillis, as well as 4 baby plants which are 2 pepperoncini and 1 cayenne and 1 poblano that I started from seed during the summer.
I overwintered 2 pepper plants last year, and I set them back by mistake, when I moved them outside again. They bounced back, though, and really produced bountifully this summer! It’s really convenient to move them if they’re planted in 3-5 gal grow bags, I move them into my living room for the winter, and I cut them back for the winter almost as hard as this, but they do grow some new leaves during winter, by a sunny window. If they do flower, I snap those off, until they go outside. You can really get a head start on the pepper season this way!
So you just leave them in the same grow bags, prune, and take them inside right? This is what I'm hoping to do as well, I don't really want to go thru buying indoor mix and uprooting all that. Also, I had absolutely no pest problems on my pepper plants so I feel a little more comfortable not cleaning and repotting before I bring them in.
Thank you for popping up in my feed because I was thinking about saving a few peppers as the weather is changing. I am going to overwinter a bell pepper, banana pepper, and one hot pepper. Take care.
I am so happy to see this information on pepper plants because I have so many that did well this summer that I would like to keep. I'm in NorCal and we are starting to see some frost. I hope I'm not to late in getting them out of the raised beds. I was going to put them in the greenhouse but the temps in there are 80 to 100, maybe by the window in the garage instead. Well done.
We are turning our shed into a overwintering grow shack. Currently working on insulation which will be our biggest issue I feel since we are in zone 5b. We have 3 grow lights, adding some reflecting material on most walls to help, adding a heater and a heat lamp. We will also try to do around 100 starters for our raised beds we are putting in in the spring. Let’s see how it goes!!
I've found that thai peppers are very easy to root cuttings from. I accidentally broke some branches fumbling one out of a pot to put in the ground. I took the 6 pieces amd potted them up and watered them in with some seedling booster type fertilizer and let them sit in half shade. They all came around! My mother inlaw knocked one off the table and broke it again! Repotted the broken piece and again! It made a new plant. Lol that one had no rooting hormone or fertilizer and did its thing. :) love pepper plants. Your channel rocks.
Where i am, fall & winter are the best seasons for starting to grow them, this year i planted 2 bacatum varieties, ghost pepper plant, a naga viper, moruga scorpion and a Thai orange. Were in for a wet spring.
Nice video, the who, what, when, where, Why, and how was pretty much all there. Yet still concise. No filler. I'm retired, and have been gardening, on and off, most of my life. Moreso, the last 10 to 15 years seriously. I know what works for me, but not above learning more. So much can go wrong when you're in a game of Chicken with Mother Nature. I tried this 2 years ago, (cutting some corners) and it does work. And yes, even in the Great White North, Maine. Everything you covered made sense. Think I might tag a long for a while, if you don't mind. TYFS Mark
I've overwintered ghost peppers for several years with great results. It does give them a great head start for the next year. I never cut them back nearly this much, but I can understand why you do. I kept mine in an unheated garage, but that was in Tennessee, where winters are pretty mild. I've got a HUGE (6ft from tip to tip) ghost pepper this year in the ground that I plan to dig up and pot up for winter. It is so covered in peppers that I hope we don't get frost or real cold weather too early, as I'll hate to cut off a bunch of unripe peppers, but I know it's going to happen, because it still pumping out flowers on the very tips of every branch.
Southern exposure , grow lights and treat it the same as summer . I get peppers , tomatoes , basil , ginger , garlic , onions , turmeric ....... all year long here in Mississippi . (indoors in the winter) This guy is too paranoid . Get some Sevin dust and some ladybugs , and rock on !
When you know you're getting close to the end of the season when you know there wont be enough time to ripen the fruit, i suggest pruning any of those new flower buds. My thoughts on that are that its not wasting energy on new growth and hopfully is instead storing it in the stems to be available for breaking dormancy. I havent done this so i dont really know, but it sounds nice.
Thanks for this useful video. I have chilies in pots hanging over my balcony and live in Central Europe, so frost in winter is a given. I bought a small plastic greenhouse that fits in the balcony and I was wondering how all my plants would fit with the foliage, so I'm glad to find out that they don't need the leaves :) I would never have thought about cleaning the roots and changing the soil, but now I will do it. I hope the greenhouse will keep them warm enough and I can get the fruits earlier next year (it usually takes until August to start getting anything when I grow them from seeds).
Thank you. I'd have never thought about washing the roots... - This year I planted my two peppers too late in May amids a slug invasion and they ended up rather small with one tiny and no peppers. So I planned to dig them out and to put them into the garden-house along with the vines and the peach, so they might continue growing, but I fear it might get too cold for them, so I imagined they might be better kept indoors, to develop a 'proper' size and perhaps a pepper, that is not nipped in the bud by a greedy slug.
Very interesting video! Thanks for all that Information. Have You ever considered waiting a few weeks between the harvest of the peppers and the cut -back of the plant? Many plants pull back a lot of sap with nutrients and chlorophyll from the leaves before the leaves dry and fall in autumn. I'm new in growing peppers, but when I make my other plants ready to overwinter, I wait with the cut until the leafs are fallen or at least brown. I'll adapt many of Your recommendations, (thanks again, that will certainly help me) when Ill make my peppers ready to hibernate, but I'll cut them way later after the harvest.
im in southern california and have gotten away with a good trim back and just leaving them outside, unless we have a lot of rain, then bringing it inside is a must. I have a 3rd year serrano thats been doing great.
I’m in Wollongong - Australia. One of my pepper plants is in its third year and I’ve never even pruned it. I have plants on my front patio that fruited all winter and have just put on a huge burst of growth now we’re coming into spring
I had 2 out of 7 peppers come back from last year. The Burnish Bush and Jalapeno made it the King of the North bell pepper didn't. I love the Burpee Burning Bush hot pepper plant. It's coming in again in zone 5a this year as well as Aji Rico.
I never knew this was a thing. I live in a flat. I raise pepper plants and give them away. I can't wait to have my own garden to grow peppers. The only one I can't get in UK is the wiri wiri pepper. What a great video.
Siving your compost will make it so much easier when you replace it. Going to try over wintering here in the UK in a polytunnel with a smaller polytunnel around it covering in straw like with rhubarb hopefully keeping frost off it. Having given it a good pruning first.
Cut my peppers down then stuck them into indoor shade with very little ambient window light. Watered very sparingly all winter. Soon as Spring sunlight hit plant, they exploded with growth and produced extremely well.
This might sound strange, but your video was so helpful because it made me realise overwintering was absolutely not for me. I carefully considered everything you said, and found it would be much easier to start new plants in the spring. Without your video, I could very well have gone about this all the wrong way. So, thank you very much for your help and taking the time to explain the process! I really appreciate it. :)
He did a very nice job, however I just trimmed mine back outside and ignored it until spring. The ones that made it are wonderful peppers and the hardy varieties I need. If I knew it was going to snow or freeze I would have thrown some shade cloth over the top but never did and there was a few over cold nights that I didn’t get to them and they survived.
There's doing it right, and there's doing it half azz and let whatever lives live. The latter isn't hard, and if you were just going to let them die anyway, why not?
Should add, I overwintered my habanero last winter successfully in a south facing window with no issues an it grew fine this year. So it will be on year 3 (grown from seed) in 2022. It produced one fruit in 2020, it produced 10 fruits in 2021(this season), hoping for more in 2022. Thanks for the video.
Thank you very much. I feel like I might do this after all. I didn't realize that you could cut the plant down so much so it wouldn't take up so much space. Great info!
Excellent detailed video! And one of my favorite channels to watch. As a new gardener, my peppers have done well this summer and I plan on following these suggestions this winter for a couple of my plants. Fingers crossed. 🤞🤞
I've never seen the roots completely rinsed clean like that before....been overwintering my peppers for almost a decade now. I know that having bugs can be an issue, but I like having worms crawling around in the soil :) nice worm castings for my plants! There's a few other beneficial insects that I do not know the name of, but I definitely have success overwintering plants (even with bugs! GASP!) I use BT Thuricide to inoculate the soil, it breaks the life cycle of fungus gnats at their larval stage.
Springtails and predatory mites also help keep the soil balanced. I usually work leaves from the plant into it's soil (okay, maybe not my birds of paradise, their leaves are a bit too big) to feed the soil life.
This is the best video I've seen on overwintering peppers. What do you think of adding a light layer of sand on top of the soil to deter fungus gnats? This still allows water and air to pass freely. Most videos just show you how to lift a plant and prune it. That's where they stop. Yours is comprehensive and clear. Thank you!
This is a fantastic video. I subscribed. Very well done. I’ve done overwintering before but not with the cutback and root wash. Just a little cutback and bring the dirt and mites and bugs and eggs and grubs and… well, you get were I’m going with this. And I just dealt with the bugs etc as they showed up. Can’t wait to do this!
Watched this about having this year restarted gardening after 20 years and wanting to overwinter my pepper plants. This video is thorough. Thank you for mentioning about neem oil ... my indoor hydroponic garden has little tiny white 'flies' that a mere dish soap and water spray has not eradicated. So I just ordered some neem oil to try because your video sent me to researching it and sounds like it is worth trying. That and I think I will put a mosquito dunk in the reservoir, not that it has mosquitos, but maybe it will help control those annoying little 'flies'.
I know it's probably a little late for those tip...but for anyone reading this in the future. Flying skull nuke em is an amazing pesticide and fungicide. It's all natural and can be applied even on plants with fruits just like neem oil. Alternating back and forth between nuke em and neem oil can take care of just about any pest problem. If you use only one pesticide repeatedly, the offspring can build up a resistance to it.
Glad I saw this video post! I'd really like to try to save a couple Scotch Bonnet plants that I started from seed in the house and transplanted to a raised bed. They are producing peppers like crazy and frost is probably coming in the next 3-4 weeks. Hopefully, it will work...I never knew pepper plants weren't annuals...I always pulled them & tossed them after the frost did them in. I'll try your method! Thanks, again!
Wish me luck! I just moved 10 of my peppers indoors (4 varieties). I'm really nervous about light and the long winter. I'm up in Vermont which is a little colder for longer than your area in CT and while I'm encouraged by your success in New England, I'm still anxious since it's my first time ever, lol.
@@goodgnarfun lol they had to wait like we all did but I've been THINKING on this one. Would it be better to go hydro indoors? Should I leave leaves? I have a few lights, they'll be fine...right?
I have 2 Carolina Reapers, a Scotch Bonnet, and an Appocolypse Red that I will be over wintering. We are on a short vacation right now and before leaving we brought them in the house. I hope they did not have any pests on them...Ugh! Right now they are in two 5 gallon buckets with holes drilled in the bottom. When bringing those inside I put them in another 5 gallon bucket without holes. Next spring I hope to transfer these into a 5 gallon bucket for each plant. We had an amazing harvest. Gave away about 90% of the harvest each time.
If you are worried about pests you can save yourself a lot of time and less stress on the roots by just watering with hydrogen peroxide solution a few times. Also Vanilla chamomile tea and sprinkle cinnamon on the soil surface once. I'll have to try the neem dip on a few this year and see how it works.
I was wondering about hydrogen peroxide and cinnamon. What is the purpose of the vanilla chamomile tea? Would peppermint tea serve the same purpose? Thanks, that is very helpful and inexpensive.
@@Chris-dw6cu Overwintering doesn't do much. (where's the yield study on this? I did the study.) I did a study over this last winter and overwintered some Savina and Habanero pepper strains as well as created 5 new plants over winter indoors from clippings from those plants(which I've never seen anyone do) to see what yield difference I got from those vs fresh started seeds in Feb(from the same plant the year prior). The conclusion is that overwintering indoors doesn't make much difference. There is no reason to do it unless you really like doing it as a project for the cold season. My seed started plants are similar in yield than overwintered, even if the stalks are larger on overwintered plants. It feels like a gimmick for youtuber's. The root shock on growth is pretty noticeable. The root binding severely stunts growth. You cannot take a plant and put it in a pot and then re-introduce it to open soil and get the correct growth patterns as the pot will effect the plants growth(because of hormone issues). I'm pretty "over the top" on this stuff. Root binding and hormone issues will nullify anything you are trying to gain. You can sprinkle cinnamon on the soil to stop gnats but honestly if you use real dirt mixed with potting soil you wont have to use an excessive amount of water to keep things moist so most soil issues won't be a factor. Also, using real dirt will be more compacted and create the resistance needed for the seed shells to stay in the soil and allow proper sprout growth. All the "seed starting" soil bags in the store are just a waste of money and effort. Don't top your plants, don't use seed starting mixtures. Don't make yield hard.
@@amandadupreez6105 I posted this to another reply so I am putting it here for you as well. Overwintering doesn't do much. (where's the yield study on this? I did the study.) I did a study over this last winter and overwintered some Savina and Habanero pepper strains as well as created 5 new plants over winter indoors from clippings from those plants(which I've never seen anyone do) to see what yield difference I got from those vs fresh started seeds in Feb(from the same plant the year prior). The conclusion is that overwintering indoors doesn't make much difference. There is no reason to do it unless you really like doing it as a project for the cold season. My seed started plants are similar in yield than overwintered, even if the stalks are larger on overwintered plants. It feels like a gimmick for youtuber's. The root shock on growth is pretty noticeable. The root binding severely stunts growth. You cannot take a plant and put it in a pot and then re-introduce it to open soil and get the correct growth patterns as the pot will effect the plants growth(because of hormone issues). I'm pretty "over the top" on this stuff. Root binding and hormone issues will nullify anything you are trying to gain. You can sprinkle cinnamon on the soil to stop gnats but honestly if you use real dirt mixed with potting soil you wont have to use an excessive amount of water to keep things moist so most soil issues won't be a factor. Also, using real dirt will be more compacted and create the resistance needed for the seed shells to stay in the soil and allow proper sprout growth. All the "seed starting" soil bags in the store are just a waste of money and effort. Don't top your plants, don't use seed starting mixtures. Don't make yield hard.
Thank you very much this was very helpful. I have a bunch of indoor plants that aren't doing anything for me at the moment and I wanted to downsize everything so I could make room for my new seedlings and the platform for them for the new season but also wanted to preserve the plants as well and this greatly helped. Now I got a few hours of work ahead of me LOL.
Did you know you can sterilize your soil in the Oven? spread it on a baking sheet an pop it in. 200F for about 45 mins does the trick. You can even do smaller batches in your microwave
2nd winter for the 5 pepper varieties I’m saving- Bell(North Star), Long Italian Red(Thunderbolt), Jalapeño M(only 5,000 Scoville units… kinda mild for us but a heavy producer) and a Big Balm globe shaped one…. also kept over an ornamental pepper that is loaded with color.(red, white, orange- “fun one”-guess they can be eaten but might be hot?) *Pepper Geek* - You said, “Prevention” for pest control- You are so right about cleaning your plants and getting new soil before bringing them indoors- I had a horrible issue w/aphids this spring before I could get the plants outside the house. ~5 sprayings… grrr… started wondering if I even liked peppers… LOL… All pepper plants grew as fabulous as I had imagined… love to grow them now… , Much thanks for Pepper Geek wisdom, Pepper-Head Phread 🐸
Awesome video, been following for a while, don't think I've commented before. I'm in the southwest of the UK and our winters can be very cold sometimes and snow is rare but does happen. I've got a large desk in the lounge and I've bought a cheap grow light (budget is almost nothing at the moment) and this is my first year of growing anything let alone peppers/chillies. As the nights are starting to draw in colder, I've started to bring my plants in overnight and in the evenings they get a little of the grow lamp which gets switched off before bed. In the morning they get taken outside and placed in the sun and if the temperature ever drops too much they come back indoors. Have you ever tried this? The reason I'm trying this is because these plants I got cheap (reduced stock) from a couple shops and only my Apache has had fruit ripen. The other plants have fruit but still green and a couple are only just starting to ripen so eager to try and get these to finish off.
You can definitely wait longer to prepare for overwintering if you want some pods to ripen! You can just bring the plants into a garage overnight on colder nights until you're ready to prune it back. Thanks for watching btw!
whenever I did this I would just stick the root ball in a bucket of water instead of using the hose, after about 30 seconds of kneading the rootball the excess dirt comes off easy, and it seems less stressful on the rootball, just an FYI, Gotta keep them peppers!!!!! Great channel
Cool! I have a habanero that grew out instead of up and gave a ton of pods. I'm planning on overwintering it along with a couple of others types. God bless y'all!!
Hey guys, I followed your guidelines for overwintering peppers for the first time (Zone 7B). Am starting to get new growth on three of the eight plants so far, and am wondering whether to trim off any of the branches that aren't yet growing, or wait a bit longer, or just leave them? Would love to see an update on the plants you overwintered too, when the timing is appropriate for your zone. Thanks, Steve
I am curious about this too. I have been plucking off the leaves but now that it is almost a month before my last frost date I have it in a bit more ambient light and am just going to let grow whatever leaves start. Although to be honest I might have not watered it (a Tabasco plant) enough. The branches are pretty brown looking. I was doing so well with them being more green than brown but with it finally starting to warm up I didn't think to increase the water 😬. Hoping it'll revive.
@@michelemaddix i just leave them alone if they start growing some then so be it. A few leaves wont hurt unless your paranoid bugs are going to come in. I just spray the plant with a insecticide for overwinter and dont have to worry about anything on the few leaves i keep. The only thing i cut off is flowers until spring.
@@brianfitch5469 thanks. I was just about successful in overwintering one Tabasco plant. But then I forgot to water it the last month before it could go back outside. I was busy getting stuff ready for the garden season and totally neglected the poor thing. 😕
Perfect timing on this video; I was just thinking about trying to overwinter peppers for the first time this year as the first frost date rapidly approaches. Great information
I will overwinter my cherry bomb peppers this year. They are wonderful roasted and pickled, and make wonderful Louisiana style hot sauce. Thanks for the thorough explanation!
A ~3" layer of vermiculite on the top and bottom of the container will make it really hard for fungus gnats to find a home/keep living in the dirt btw.
I didn't overwinter though I pruned my pepper plant. The tips of the older leaves have gone brown and dropping but new leaves are growing nicely. The plant produced peppers all winter and still is through spring and summer. So far I have taken off about 40 peppers with about another 40 on the plant.
Instead of cleaning and repotting you can just top your pots with an inch or so of sand to smother any larvae before they can emerge and continue reproduction and keep some Castile neem spray handy!
@@Chuckbobuck201 if you have a healthy population of ‘hypoaspis miles’ in your soil ecology they will not allow aphid larvae to proliferate in your soil. That being said I’m not 100% sure it’s a good idea but I have two huge potted pepper plants overwintering in my front room and I will let you know if I have any issues before spring!
Excellent & very thorough video Thank you!! I have an 8' x 4' raised pepper bed it's a packed 'forest' of 6 types of pepper plants thriving & prolific, I will hate to see them die, especially knowing they have the ability to be perennial. First frost in my area of NJ is expected in a few weeks. I would love to try overwintering at least a few.
Thank you for all of the information on your channel! A question for you: I’ve overwintered my Chocolate Reaper successfully for two seasons now, and this year, it has started leafing out inside in early December. Should I continue to prune the leaves, or is it best to let it do it’s thing inside while waiting for Spring? Thank you in advance.
I am going to give this a try. We live in NW Montana so our growing season is short, 3 months. We grow most of our garden in a high tunnel, unheated so as soon as the first frost hits it's curtains for most of the crops. Thanks for the video.
It was 80 degrees yesterday, but dropped to 52 last night. I picked off most of the tomatoes & okra, but the peppers were still green. I’m not picking them until they finish turning red & yellow. I had several poblano & cayenne I left out there in the ground. Turnip greens & turnips will be ok. 🫑
I've seen many videos of preparing the plants for over-wintering, and all the info is similar and easy to follow. However, I can't find any info on how to monitor and care for the plant when it should be dormant. What do you do if it starts to bud and shoot? How can you tell if the plant is suffering or dying? Are there other considerations to be aware of during the winter months? Thanks for all the fantastic videos!
@@BeatrixKiddo Thanks for the reply. We get very little natural light in the winter, so my fear is that instead of hibernating the stalks just dry up and die. However, I'm reluctant to use a grow light because I do not want to stimulate growth indoors during the winter.
@@BeatrixKiddo sounds like good advice that I'll likely follow unless Pepper Geek chimes in with something contradictory. Thanks for the time and effort of your reply. 🤝
you over winter exactly the same way I do, nice. I don't think you can kill a pepper plant tbh. I've had some live up to 6-7 years doing it this way. Great information, I can confirm, it works.
This worked so well. This year I replanted about 10 plants. What was super crazy, every variety grew fast and went to red almost immediately. I have a bush of jalapeños that all went red. I had cubanelles that went all red too. Was amazing. Can’t believe the plants now look like trees with bark.
@@PepperGeek now the question is do I take them to 3rd year? I did have a really bad bout with fungus gnats and I put them in a grow tent because my garage is too cold. Now my grow tent has a sundew (carnivorous plant) so that may help. They wanted to flower so badly. I also made a bonsai out of one. That was pretty cool.
@@DanielMerk23 Fruit Fly Sticky Traps are about 50 cents a piece and work pretty well to keep gnats in check but won't eliminate them. I had fungus gnats with my seedlings this spring. Just to give the plants a bit of relief I hung a couple around my trays with an oscillating fan blowing the gnats onto the traps. Killed hundreds of them without any chemicals touching the plants. I used the "Gideal 20-Pack Dual-Sided Yellow Sticky Traps", $8-9 on Amazon for a 20 pack. I don't like them outdoors without some sort of guard because removing a suffering bird from a sticky trap is an awful experience.
I have a Chiletepin from last year that successfully survived! Let's go for two years! Also will be trying to over-winter a couple of Indian long hot peppers (these peppers can grow to 12" long or more!)
Thank you for only talking about what was necessary and not making me listen to a bunch of nonsense that had nothing to do with the subject of the video I really appreciate that. That will definitely make me watch you more.
I agree
Been growing peppers for 60 years. One of the best articles I've ever watched. Bravo!!!
Thanks, that’s encouraging. Peppers are beautiful. 🌶🌶🌶🪴
me too! ( okay 40 odd years) I love these young people!
Är du svensk??
It's great to see their enthusiasm!
Just started this year 😊
It is nice that someone actually knows that pepper plants can be perennial. Most people think they are just annual as that is how they are advertised!
🤫
You’d be surprised what’s perennial lol.
Last of my peppers for this season
Jack Frost’s visit last night was the reason
White by morning, then black by day
The leaves now limp presage decay
So into the composting bin they go
Those now spent plants of this past summer
What a bummer
But wait! For upon the garden’s earth I’ve just spread
My home made compost from last year’s dead
Come next spring when plants emerge
Upon these organics they will splurge
As nature’s cycle begins anew
What once was frost, now a summer night’s dew
Nature rewards with more than she’s given
When from just a seed life is driven
And so it is of this gardener’s pleasures
That we reap as we sow of these veggie treasures
I love watching your how-to videos on peppers so just wanted to share one of my gardening poems I've written. Keep the great videos coming.
You are a poet and I tip my hat to you as fellow wordsmith.
Best video on overwintering peppers that I have seen on TH-cam...and believe me, I have searched for and watched PLENTY. Thanks for the time , effort, and thought you put into making this fantastic video.
I'm really happy that he included info on re-introducing them to the outside in the Spring!
I am going to try this with my reaper plants and taipin peppers.
Love this. I brought in one of my jalapeno plants for three years in a row. The stalk was as big as my thumb. It produced more peppers every year. Unfortunately, the third year it bit the dust as I was not as diligent in caring for it. Thank you ... have subscribed.
I'm in Maine and folks in cold climates, this is key info. I had a power outage in the cool room I was overwintering my peps in, and lost all but one plant -- but that one plant, oh boy was it a real producer in its second year. This year I'm overwintering as many chiles as I can fit and hoping I can keep the conditions roughly correct for six months. Hopefully next year I will have a lot more chiles in year 2 and get that production boost.
I bring in some of my herb plants by repotting into garden soil and pots that fit indoors. What I do to prevent bugs is simply dry the blossoms of my mums, which I pinch off as they begin to die to encourage further flowering. Those dried blossoms contain pyrethrins. I just sprinkle the dried blossoms around the soil and no more bugs ; )
Interesting. I looked at my largest mum that had lots of blossoms and all the early blossoms are gone. It's like someone cut all of them. Do you know if animals like to eat them? I know that groundhog comes around but never saw him go after mums.
Rabbits killed mine.
I guess, mums the word! Wonderful use of spent plants!
I successfully overwintered Jalapenos, Giant Marconi and bell peppers last winter. I did have a problem with gnats till I got Neem Oil spray. I've seen videos suggesting a 1 inch layer of sand ontop of the soil to stop them from being able to lay eggs so going to give that a try this year. I kept my plants in a north facing window (I don't have a grow room/garage or greenhouse) so they never got direct sunlight and gave each plant a half cup of water every two weeks and all but 1 plant made it. Great video and very informative.
I named my pepper Pete and I didn't want to pull him! Thanks for the video
🥰
I live in So Cal. We rarely get a frost, and if we do it is a short time. I grew my 36 pepper plants in containers with indoor potting soil. So after seeing this video and reading the comments (thank you) I will prune them, treat the soil, cover with sand and place under the shade tarp. Thanks for the video and wish me luck!
Good luck😊
Hi from central Portugal; Just letting you & anyone who's interested know, I left last years green pepper plants outside in the soil over this last winter..All the plants are now looking green & healthy. I did take the extra precaution of sheltering the roots from any weather with some light boarding.
That is great! Wish we could leave some outside, but I know what would happen 🥶
I think our winter in Central Portugal was quite warm this year so that might have helped too.
Trimming the leaves back 3+ days before uprooting will increase your survival rate because it gives the plant a chance to heal before the next trauma (uprooting). Love the video though! I'll have to try this, although I have 7 months of snow in northern Canada, so I'm not sure how long it'll stay dormant.
mine did well by not cutting back this month n even had peppers growing through winter but had mine in pots to begin with but cut back roots n put some in smaller pots, they need sun in winter n water occasionally, I usually have around 7 I do this to each yr
I got a very late start on my peppers this year as the first set of seeds did not germinate at all (too cold). By the time I got more seeds and replanted, it was June. My peppers are just now blooming (first part of September in zone 8b, October 15-ish first expected frost date). So . . . I'm going to try overwintering for first time. I have 18 plants to repot and bring indoors, quite a daunting task for sure! Thanks for the helpful video.
I'm also in zone 8b ( SoCal high desert) and we have a few days down to 29F and several days in the 31-33. My pepper plants in the raised beds suffered severe damages to the upper branches and leaves. Only the trunks and lower branches are still green. Some peppers I have in pots, I moved them to the southern wall and they have lots of sunlight and a bit of heat from the house so they are still survived, the fruits are still on, just look sad. I don't bring them inside because I am also having other fig cuttings, tomato cuttings ... to the south windows. The peppers I have this year are just regular varieties like green bell peppers, jalapenos ( mild variety which is not my preference) and some sweet peppers I bought from the stores, so not that valuable to bring inside the house with risk of pests, plus I haven't had time to the unheated green houses are still not properly set up. I'm starting many seeds from the rarer varieties like carolina reaper, chiltepin, komodo dragon, cubanell, savina,.yellow, purple and white bell peppers. They are all harder to germinate and propagate, so I'll probably use this overwinter method next year as this is a very effective way to prevent pests get inside the house.
@@sandrajohnston9745I’m in this same situation in June 2024. Figure it’s a great opportunity to practice this! How did things turn out for you? I’m in 8a. Happy growing!
7 months of snow sounds like a nightmare
I have had success in growing peppers indoors purely by trial & error. First time, since they did not yet bear fruit when the frost came, I brought them indoors and had peppers in January. Last season, I put them all in pots, and brought them inside to a cool but sunny room. They began to get lots of aphids, so I sprayed them with castile soapy water to keep the plants alive. In spring, I put them outdoors, and my hot ball pepper plant has blossomed beautifully into many little red peppers. I am so glad I watched your video. Now, I will prune them all back, and bring them indoors to winter over. Thank you!!!
That is exactly how I discovered peppers being able to overwinter and now I have had some of my pepper plants for a little bit over 5 years the longest one I ever had was 7 years and like he said sometimes it does give peppers in the winter I never put mine in any special light or anything it just gave me peppers sitting in the sunny window I live in North Dakota so that's exciting because we have such a short growing season
Love your pepper and your pepper will love you back! Most folks don’t know what a pepper plant can do and how happy they can be in a sun room even here on planet Sweden.
Hey guys love this channel. Was going to say instead of stressing the plant so much to get the bugs out, try soaking it completely under water for an hour. It won't hurt the plant but it will get the bugs and eggs.
I did do this for our bonsai last year with a bit of neem and soap - worked well
@@PepperGeek I've found it works for everything I've tried it with. Nothing really has ever shown any dislike for a full emersion. Neem is good but I find a castile soap like dr bronner has a better effect for longer.
Do you soak it with soil still on? Removing all the soil like he did scares the heck out of me.
@@JRRedDawg Hi, do you immerse the leaves & stems as well as the roots when you do it this way? I know plants 'breath' so wondering if upper part of the plant remains above water or can it be fully submerged? Thanks!
@@samjones3106
Ya the don't mind mind. Its like when you pull a wilted plant from the root or make a cutting. When you put them in fresh water they perk right up within the hour. Roots just swell. As long as they have good drainage when you pull them out. If I'm doing a full root dip and not just the plant itself. I'll rinse the plant and gently emerse the whole for 15 20 minutes. Has always worked really well for me in pest control. If the plant is suffering or I'm transplanting for overwinter or in the ground for sprin I use a few caps full of superthrive, a nontoxic vitamin solution, and submerge the pot or root ball completely. It works for me. I've always been happy with the results.
2 inches of sand on the top will keep gnats from escaping the soil and they will die. It also helps retain moisture.
so THAT's what those lil bugs were?!!?!?! I didn't know what they were and they decimated my plants indoors...
Thanks
Thank you so much.
Great idea
I'm a new gardener. 👩🌾 last year I harvested a few peppers. I was able to overwinter two pepper plants last fall. This year I have about eight different pepper plants. I have so many peppers this year. I'm going to try to overwinter all of the plants this winter.
Thanks pepper geek. Making my 3 car stall into my plant room for my flowers and peppers.
Be sure to do a good job at rinsing and getting rid of bugs and their eggs from the roots before moving it indoors, like he has explained. We made this mistake last last Fall, and all winter and early spring we had fungus gnats throughout our house and infesting all our other indoor plants. They are also called drain flies and they lay eggs in organic material and the larvae feed on it and then become tiny black flies that get in your face and behave like fruit flies. Hard to get rid of, but we bought a product called Mosquito Dunks and soaked a Dunk in the watering can over night and used the water to water all the indoor plants each week for a month or so. It worked! Mosquito Dunks are harmless to humans and animals. They only kill the larvae of flying insects which eat it.
Can you buy this in Ontario Canada?
The active ingredient in Mosquito dunks is "bacillus thuringiansis israeli". Any product containing this would work.
BT works good too. Bacteria that starts with a T. It's a natural product. A bacteria naturally found in soil. It kills all kind of bugs including fungus knats. All the rage.
Despite being skeptical, I also found that those yellow sticky things got rid of fungus gnats eventually as well.
@@keithshergold9257a combination of both is best, dunks to kill the larvae in the soil and the sticky traps to get the adult population under control. I’ve used mosquito dunks before and it works (take it from a fellow skeptical lol)
This was my first year growing peppers in zone 4. We are preparing for the first hard frost and im too attached to the plants to toss them in the compost. Planning to bring most of them indoors, some dormant and some to see if they keep fruiting. Thanks for the video!
I'm on the edge of 3 & 4. New to the region, not the state though. I'm attached to all my plants which look just as great now as they did in June when I planted them. My neighbors & local food pantry have delighted in its bounty. I've even grown flowers that supposedly won't grow here. I thought I'd lost my bell pepper in June's flood, but I placed it in a cup in my heater room and its actually crowned. I've also learned about doing this with eggplants & tomatoes. I love experimenting & with 4 months of outdoor gardening...my garden needs all the blessings it can receive. It will be high 30's tonight & 27 Thurs. night. Take care, ~ Covah
Overwintered for the first time this year, just put the plants back into the sun a few weeks ago. Out of 11 plants, 10 made it so pretty happy with that. We only have light frosts, so I left them potted in one of those cheap plastic greenhouses. For reference here in Melb, Australia we get 850-1000 chill hours and the capsicums did fine in that temp range overwinter (0C - 15C is our night/day temp range during winter). If you get below 0 a lot I would take them inside, ours did ok with about 4-5 days of below 0C.
+
What month did you do this? In melb also.
Thanks for this. I was sitting here wondering how I could keep them at 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Glad to know that they will probably be okay with much colder temps.
I'm in a similar location, I got a couple of hard frosts this year and I thought it had nuked the plants. All the leaves scrunched up. Do you think with similar heavy pruning they'd survive over winter unprotected? Or would I need to make a poly tunnel or similar for them. I plant in raised beds.
After reading up on overwintering, I decided to give it a try. I have 17 potted plants, 7 reapers, 5 ghosts, 5 scorpions. This is the first year I've even grown hot peppers... and I kinda like the challenge to see if I can get them thru this. So, today I brought all of them inside. I live in south central Missouri. The temp tonight is supposed to be 28F. I don't want to lose them, I'll see how it goes. The plants produced abundantly and I'm looking forward to keeping them alive for a repeat performance!
Update?
We have 2 green houses full of our peppers (2 Carolina Reepers, 4 Red Ghost, 2 Chocolate Ghost, 2 Green Bell, 2 Red Bell, 1 Gypsy, 1 Red Habanero, 2 Orange Habanero, 1 Chocolate Habanero, 1 Scorpion, 1 Perconcini, and 1 Jalapeno). This is our 1st year having any type of garden or greenhouse. The plan is to insulate the greenhouses and keep our peppers producing year round. We are in the Mid-Atlantic where winters can get cold. So we also have heaters we will be running. We've done ok over the summer, even revived some plants that struggled in our house (we bought them online in February and kept them indoors). They were reduced to nothing but sticks when we brought them outside in late April. They had been doing fine, then lost all their leaves. My husband thought sure they were dead. But I knew as long as there was life in the stem, they could recover. Now they are all producing beautiful hot peppers! I'm taking cuttings to start new plants for the spring as well. We're learning as we go and hope we have sufficiently prepared for the winter. Our greenhouses should still get sunlight over the winter. Do you think we will still need grow lights as well? We have 1 set, but will need to get another set for the 2nd green house if the natural sunlight is insufficient. They should receive light pretty much all day. Of course, the days are shorter!
Where'd you get the chocolate pepper seeds?
I'm in Virginia and I am in a similar situation. What size is your greenhouse and how are you keeping it warm? I have a 10x20x7 green poly greenhouse. I assembled it in early March 2021 so this will be my first full winter.
Good lord! You're going to need a stomach transplant at some point!
my high tunnel is a 40 x 48 can i over winter in place we live in ohio
What do you mean with „Green Bell“
I’m definitely doing this coming winter as the pepper plants I have are quite abundant. I have 14 pepper plants in self wicking 5 gallon buckets and I’ve had a most bountiful year so far. I have Anaheim, poblano, red and yellow bell, jalapeño and Tabasco. I’ve picked at least 20 pounds and canned 2/3 that much, I’ve eaten the rest. I love peppers.
I’m using my peppers in flower arrangements. I already made a ton of hot sauce and dried more than I can use for years. I’m gonna try to overwinter them for the 1st time.
Sounds great, good luck with the overwintered plant!
This is the one of the best and more accurate video about overwintering peppers .Thank you very much .
To further confuse fungas gnats, i like to place a layer of play sand on top of the soil and bottom water. I find a lot of success with this
what does the play sand do to them?
@@thecyclingcouple4438 makes it harder for them to burrow into the soil.
I HATE fungus gnats. Me and my peroxide had some battles this year.
Ever try mosquito bits? Works like a charm they won't reproduce.
@@MrBigangry tried that last year, still got fungus gnats. What’s the trick?
When I lived in Palmdale California thankfully our Winters aren't that harsh so I heavily mulched my plants and put Home Depot buckets on top of them. During the day I would take them off, and put them back at sunset. I was so happy when they came back in the spring!
Now I live in Las Vegas Nevada and I have a container garden so I just moved the buckets inside of our shed that has Windows during the winter.
Good idea with the covering. I'm planning on dragging everything under the covered patio but the bucket would keep the cold dew off.
I’ve been overwintering my Jalepeños for several years with great results! The first year I had growth and even a few peppers and the plant was fine. Last year I put them in the basement and only got some growth right as spring was starting. It’s worth the effort.
Did you have light on them in the basement?
@@ExtravagantFragrances there was some light. They were next to the window.
Thanks for the ideas and suggestions. I will try this. My peppers are doing great this season!
The only drawback I can see is that my living room is already jammed with bananas, guavas, citrus and more. A few more plants and I won't be able to walk in there. 😄
Also - a tip: Get a Felco #2 pruner. You'll never look back! It's the cadillac of pruners. Will set you back about 70 bucks but with care you can leave it to your grandkids. Sharpening blades is easy. Replacing blades is also easy. Cheers.
I just came across this video. I’ve heard of overwintering pepper plants but never knew how it was done until now. Surprised that all of the leaves are removed. I have hungarian hots, pepperoncinis and jalapeño peppers that I am going to “try” to overwinter. Thanks to your video I am comfortable trying it. Thanks!
Perfect timing for this video as I was wondering how to overwinter my two happy and healthy fish peppers. Thank you for posting!
I really, really, really want to thank you two for never starting a video with "What's goin' on, guys" and for never having your mouth stupidly wide open for your intro like TH-camrs often do. It is the most ridiculous behaviour and I find it insulting when TH-camrs do that. It is as if viewers are too stupid to pay attention unless they make it looking shocking. I appreciate that you respect the intelligence of your viewers. Please continue to keep it real and down to earth (pun intended).
Haha, thanks for that. Glad you enjoy our channel and how we do things here!
Very timely video! I have been planning to prep my peppers for overwintering, and this was just the motivation I needed to get it done, thanks! 😁 I felt like Morticia with the roses though LOL
I live in Northern California and last year I cut my peppers down and left the outside since our winters are mild, but not one survived...so this year I will be over wintering some of you super hots like my reaper, 7- pot bubble gum,SRPs,mad hatter and some rocotos. Thanks for a very informative video.
I’m going big for my first time overwintering. I have 3 jalapeños, 2 ghost peppers, 2 habaneros, 1 Tabasco, 1 poblano, 1 Carolina reaper and 1 spicy bell pepper. Plus I have some seedlings that I’m trying to develop far too late in the season.
If you're having fun, there is no bad time to plant a new plant 👍🏻
@@PepperGeek I’m definitely having fun, plus my 4 year old son loves it which is an added bonus. Just had my first Carolina reaper seedling sprout yesterday 😃
I’m in the exact same situation as you; I’m trying out overwintering for the first time this winter with 18 peppers total! 6 bell peppers, 2 cayennes, 2 jalapeños, 2 poblanos, 2 red chillis, as well as 4 baby plants which are 2 pepperoncini and 1 cayenne and 1 poblano that I started from seed during the summer.
And now my first chocolate bhutlah seedling has sprouted.
Dude we have almost the same garden. I got Scorpion peppers and Thia chili along with a few other varieties.
I overwintered 2 pepper plants last year, and I set them back by mistake, when I moved them outside again. They bounced back, though, and really produced bountifully this summer! It’s really convenient to move them if they’re planted in 3-5 gal grow bags, I move them into my living room for the winter, and I cut them back for the winter almost as hard as this, but they do grow some new leaves during winter, by a sunny window. If they do flower, I snap those off, until they go outside. You can really get a head start on the pepper season this way!
I do Sam's with big plant pots n grow bags
So you just leave them in the same grow bags, prune, and take them inside right? This is what I'm hoping to do as well, I don't really want to go thru buying indoor mix and uprooting all that. Also, I had absolutely no pest problems on my pepper plants so I feel a little more comfortable not cleaning and repotting before I bring them in.
Thank you for popping up in my feed because I was thinking about saving a few peppers as the weather is changing. I am going to overwinter a bell pepper, banana pepper, and one hot pepper. Take care.
Sounds good!
I am so happy to see this information on pepper plants because I have so many that did well this summer that I would like to keep. I'm in NorCal and we are starting to see some frost. I hope I'm not to late in getting them out of the raised beds. I was going to put them in the greenhouse but the temps in there are 80 to 100, maybe by the window in the garage instead. Well done.
We are turning our shed into a overwintering grow shack. Currently working on insulation which will be our biggest issue I feel since we are in zone 5b. We have 3 grow lights, adding some reflecting material on most walls to help, adding a heater and a heat lamp.
We will also try to do around 100 starters for our raised beds we are putting in in the spring. Let’s see how it goes!!
Sounds like a great use for the space! Good luck :)
I've found that thai peppers are very easy to root cuttings from. I accidentally broke some branches fumbling one out of a pot to put in the ground. I took the 6 pieces amd potted them up and watered them in with some seedling booster type fertilizer and let them sit in half shade. They all came around! My mother inlaw knocked one off the table and broke it again! Repotted the broken piece and again! It made a new plant. Lol that one had no rooting hormone or fertilizer and did its thing. :) love pepper plants. Your channel rocks.
That is awesome - we tried some rooting with a ghost-type and the roots never came, but the mold did. Might try with out KS White Thai now!
Where i am, fall & winter are the best seasons for starting to grow them, this year i planted 2 bacatum varieties, ghost pepper plant, a naga viper, moruga scorpion and a Thai orange. Were in for a wet spring.
Nice video, the who, what, when, where, Why, and how was pretty much all there.
Yet still concise. No filler. I'm retired, and have been gardening, on and off, most
of my life. Moreso, the last 10 to 15 years seriously. I know what works for me,
but not above learning more. So much can go wrong when you're in a game of
Chicken with Mother Nature.
I tried this 2 years ago, (cutting some corners) and it does work. And yes, even in
the Great White North, Maine. Everything you covered made sense. Think I might
tag a long for a while, if you don't mind.
TYFS Mark
Thanks for joining - glad you enjoyed the video and hope you find some value in the rest of our content. Cheers!
Fantastic overwintering pepper plants tutorial! Will be applying your technique on our pepper plants today ♡
I've overwintered ghost peppers for several years with great results. It does give them a great head start for the next year. I never cut them back nearly this much, but I can understand why you do. I kept mine in an unheated garage, but that was in Tennessee, where winters are pretty mild. I've got a HUGE (6ft from tip to tip) ghost pepper this year in the ground that I plan to dig up and pot up for winter. It is so covered in peppers that I hope we don't get frost or real cold weather too early, as I'll hate to cut off a bunch of unripe peppers, but I know it's going to happen, because it still pumping out flowers on the very tips of every branch.
For storing it in the garage - does it not need light?
Southern exposure , grow lights and treat it the same as summer . I get peppers , tomatoes , basil , ginger , garlic , onions , turmeric ....... all year long here in Mississippi . (indoors in the winter) This guy is too paranoid . Get some Sevin dust and some ladybugs , and rock on !
How much neem and soap for soaking the plant?
When you know you're getting close to the end of the season when you know there wont be enough time to ripen the fruit, i suggest pruning any of those new flower buds. My thoughts on that are that its not wasting energy on new growth and hopfully is instead storing it in the stems to be available for breaking dormancy.
I havent done this so i dont really know, but it sounds nice.
@@inmyopinion6836 well you like using toxic poison so you are not nearly paranoid enough!
Thanks for this useful video. I have chilies in pots hanging over my balcony and live in Central Europe, so frost in winter is a given. I bought a small plastic greenhouse that fits in the balcony and I was wondering how all my plants would fit with the foliage, so I'm glad to find out that they don't need the leaves :) I would never have thought about cleaning the roots and changing the soil, but now I will do it. I hope the greenhouse will keep them warm enough and I can get the fruits earlier next year (it usually takes until August to start getting anything when I grow them from seeds).
Thank you. I'd have never thought about washing the roots... - This year I planted my two peppers too late in May amids a slug invasion and they ended up rather small with one tiny and no peppers. So I planned to dig them out and to put them into the garden-house along with the vines and the peach, so they might continue growing, but I fear it might get too cold for them, so I imagined they might be better kept indoors, to develop a 'proper' size and perhaps a pepper, that is not nipped in the bud by a greedy slug.
Very interesting video! Thanks for all that Information.
Have You ever considered waiting a few weeks between the harvest of the peppers and the cut -back of the plant?
Many plants pull back a lot of sap with nutrients and chlorophyll from the leaves before the leaves dry and fall in autumn.
I'm new in growing peppers, but when I make my other plants ready to overwinter, I wait with the cut until the leafs are fallen or at least brown.
I'll adapt many of Your recommendations, (thanks again, that will certainly help me) when Ill make my peppers ready to hibernate, but I'll cut them way later after the harvest.
im in southern california and have gotten away with a good trim back and just leaving them outside, unless we have a lot of rain, then bringing it inside is a must. I have a 3rd year serrano thats been doing great.
I’m in Wollongong - Australia. One of my pepper plants is in its third year and I’ve never even pruned it. I have plants on my front patio that fruited all winter and have just put on a huge burst of growth now we’re coming into spring
@@joshuafahy218 must be nice to have year-round fruits! Not so much here on the Canadian prairies :(
I just converted over a extra closet in my new place for my peppers in the winter :) going to buy some new potting soil this next week
I had 2 out of 7 peppers come back from last year. The Burnish Bush and Jalapeno made it the King of the North bell pepper didn't. I love the Burpee Burning Bush hot pepper plant. It's coming in again in zone 5a this year as well as Aji Rico.
I never knew this was a thing. I live in a flat. I raise pepper plants and give them away. I can't wait to have my own garden to grow peppers. The only one I can't get in UK is the wiri wiri pepper. What a great video.
Siving your compost will make it so much easier when you replace it. Going to try over wintering here in the UK in a polytunnel with a smaller polytunnel around it covering in straw like with rhubarb hopefully keeping frost off it. Having given it a good pruning first.
I think I'll try that and see what happens!
I'm in Huddersfield. I'm going to have a go too in the greenhouse. Nothing to lose.
Cut my peppers down then stuck them into indoor shade with very little ambient window light. Watered very sparingly all winter. Soon as Spring sunlight hit plant, they exploded with growth and produced extremely well.
Awesome!
This might sound strange, but your video was so helpful because it made me realise overwintering was absolutely not for me. I carefully considered everything you said, and found it would be much easier to start new plants in the spring. Without your video, I could very well have gone about this all the wrong way. So, thank you very much for your help and taking the time to explain the process! I really appreciate it. :)
Absolutely! Glad it was helpful in making your decision, definitely not for everyone
He did a very nice job, however I just trimmed mine back outside and ignored it until spring. The ones that made it are wonderful peppers and the hardy varieties I need. If I knew it was going to snow or freeze I would have thrown some shade cloth over the top but never did and there was a few over cold nights that I didn’t get to them and they survived.
@@calisingh7978 That's wonderful! I'll experiment with the ones that are in really sheltered spots, see if they survive. Thanks for the tip!
There's doing it right, and there's doing it half azz and let whatever lives live. The latter isn't hard, and if you were just going to let them die anyway, why not?
@@calisingh7978 imma try that with some we get some frozen overnights but im to far south to get snow.
Should add, I overwintered my habanero last winter successfully in a south facing window with no issues an it grew fine this year. So it will be on year 3 (grown from seed) in 2022. It produced one fruit in 2020, it produced 10 fruits in 2021(this season), hoping for more in 2022. Thanks for the video.
Thank you very much. I feel like I might do this after all. I didn't realize that you could cut the plant down so much so it wouldn't take up so much space. Great info!
Glad to hear it - good luck! With seeds going out of stock on many sites, it makes sense to keep any prized plants alive
@@PepperGeek
Would keeping it in the house in a bay window with the house around 68- 70° would there be problems??
Excellent detailed video! And one of my favorite channels to watch. As a new gardener, my peppers have done well this summer and I plan on following these suggestions this winter for a couple of my plants. Fingers crossed. 🤞🤞
I've never seen the roots completely rinsed clean like that before....been overwintering my peppers for almost a decade now. I know that having bugs can be an issue, but I like having worms crawling around in the soil :) nice worm castings for my plants! There's a few other beneficial insects that I do not know the name of, but I definitely have success overwintering plants (even with bugs! GASP!) I use BT Thuricide to inoculate the soil, it breaks the life cycle of fungus gnats at their larval stage.
Springtails and predatory mites also help keep the soil balanced. I usually work leaves from the plant into it's soil (okay, maybe not my birds of paradise, their leaves are a bit too big) to feed the soil life.
This is the best video I've seen on overwintering peppers. What do you think of adding a light layer of sand on top of the soil to deter fungus gnats? This still allows water and air to pass freely. Most videos just show you how to lift a plant and prune it. That's where they stop. Yours is comprehensive and clear. Thank you!
This is a fantastic video. I subscribed. Very well done. I’ve done overwintering before but not with the cutback and root wash. Just a little cutback and bring the dirt and mites and bugs and eggs and grubs and… well, you get were I’m going with this. And I just dealt with the bugs etc as they showed up. Can’t wait to do this!
Watched this about having this year restarted gardening after 20 years and wanting to overwinter my pepper plants. This video is thorough. Thank you for mentioning about neem oil ... my indoor hydroponic garden has little tiny white 'flies' that a mere dish soap and water spray has not eradicated. So I just ordered some neem oil to try because your video sent me to researching it and sounds like it is worth trying. That and I think I will put a mosquito dunk in the reservoir, not that it has mosquitos, but maybe it will help control those annoying little 'flies'.
I know it's probably a little late for those tip...but for anyone reading this in the future. Flying skull nuke em is an amazing pesticide and fungicide. It's all natural and can be applied even on plants with fruits just like neem oil. Alternating back and forth between nuke em and neem oil can take care of just about any pest problem. If you use only one pesticide repeatedly, the offspring can build up a resistance to it.
Glad I saw this video post! I'd really like to try to save a couple Scotch Bonnet plants that I started from seed in the house and transplanted to a raised bed. They are producing peppers like crazy and frost is probably coming in the next 3-4 weeks. Hopefully, it will work...I never knew pepper plants weren't annuals...I always pulled them & tossed them after the frost did them in. I'll try your method! Thanks, again!
Great! Glad you saw it too - good luck with the scotch bonnets
Are the Scotch Bonnet peppers hot or sweet or in between? They look interesting.
Wish me luck! I just moved 10 of my peppers indoors (4 varieties). I'm really nervous about light and the long winter. I'm up in Vermont which is a little colder for longer than your area in CT and while I'm encouraged by your success in New England, I'm still anxious since it's my first time ever, lol.
When I tell you I have been WAITING for y'all to do a video on this subject, lol. I love your content!
Haha I’m sayin just in time
@@goodgnarfun lol they had to wait like we all did but I've been THINKING on this one. Would it be better to go hydro indoors? Should I leave leaves? I have a few lights, they'll be fine...right?
Check out "khang starr" he does hydro peppers.
@@AlexXDiety I have a mother plant that I clone. I used to keep peppers in the dirt but electricity is expensive so i only grow marijuana.
I have 2 Carolina Reapers, a Scotch Bonnet, and an Appocolypse Red that I will be over wintering. We are on a short vacation right now and before leaving we brought them in the house. I hope they did not have any pests on them...Ugh! Right now they are in two 5 gallon buckets with holes drilled in the bottom. When bringing those inside I put them in another 5 gallon bucket without holes. Next spring I hope to transfer these into a 5 gallon bucket for each plant. We had an amazing harvest. Gave away about 90% of the harvest each time.
If you are worried about pests you can save yourself a lot of time and less stress on the roots by just watering with hydrogen peroxide solution a few times. Also Vanilla chamomile tea and sprinkle cinnamon on the soil surface once. I'll have to try the neem dip on a few this year and see how it works.
Thanks for the tips - peroxide definitely takes care of eggs well
I was wondering about hydrogen peroxide and cinnamon. What is the purpose of the vanilla chamomile tea? Would peppermint tea serve the same purpose? Thanks, that is very helpful and inexpensive.
How much 3% hydrogen peroxide per gallon of water do you use?
@@Chris-dw6cu Overwintering doesn't do much. (where's the yield study on this? I did the study.) I did a study over this last winter and overwintered some Savina and Habanero pepper strains as well as created 5 new plants over winter indoors from clippings from those plants(which I've never seen anyone do) to see what yield difference I got from those vs fresh started seeds in Feb(from the same plant the year prior). The conclusion is that overwintering indoors doesn't make much difference. There is no reason to do it unless you really like doing it as a project for the cold season. My seed started plants are similar in yield than overwintered, even if the stalks are larger on overwintered plants. It feels like a gimmick for youtuber's. The root shock on growth is pretty noticeable. The root binding severely stunts growth. You cannot take a plant and put it in a pot and then re-introduce it to open soil and get the correct growth patterns as the pot will effect the plants growth(because of hormone issues). I'm pretty "over the top" on this stuff. Root binding and hormone issues will nullify anything you are trying to gain. You can sprinkle cinnamon on the soil to stop gnats but honestly if you use real dirt mixed with potting soil you wont have to use an excessive amount of water to keep things moist so most soil issues won't be a factor. Also, using real dirt will be more compacted and create the resistance needed for the seed shells to stay in the soil and allow proper sprout growth. All the "seed starting" soil bags in the store are just a waste of money and effort. Don't top your plants, don't use seed starting mixtures. Don't make yield hard.
@@amandadupreez6105 I posted this to another reply so I am putting it here for you as well. Overwintering doesn't do much. (where's the yield study on this? I did the study.) I did a study over this last winter and overwintered some Savina and Habanero pepper strains as well as created 5 new plants over winter indoors from clippings from those plants(which I've never seen anyone do) to see what yield difference I got from those vs fresh started seeds in Feb(from the same plant the year prior). The conclusion is that overwintering indoors doesn't make much difference. There is no reason to do it unless you really like doing it as a project for the cold season. My seed started plants are similar in yield than overwintered, even if the stalks are larger on overwintered plants. It feels like a gimmick for youtuber's. The root shock on growth is pretty noticeable. The root binding severely stunts growth. You cannot take a plant and put it in a pot and then re-introduce it to open soil and get the correct growth patterns as the pot will effect the plants growth(because of hormone issues). I'm pretty "over the top" on this stuff. Root binding and hormone issues will nullify anything you are trying to gain. You can sprinkle cinnamon on the soil to stop gnats but honestly if you use real dirt mixed with potting soil you wont have to use an excessive amount of water to keep things moist so most soil issues won't be a factor. Also, using real dirt will be more compacted and create the resistance needed for the seed shells to stay in the soil and allow proper sprout growth. All the "seed starting" soil bags in the store are just a waste of money and effort. Don't top your plants, don't use seed starting mixtures. Don't make yield hard.
Thank you very much this was very helpful. I have a bunch of indoor plants that aren't doing anything for me at the moment and I wanted to downsize everything so I could make room for my new seedlings and the platform for them for the new season but also wanted to preserve the plants as well and this greatly helped. Now I got a few hours of work ahead of me LOL.
Did you know you can sterilize your soil in the Oven? spread it on a baking sheet an pop it in. 200F for about 45 mins does the trick.
You can even do smaller batches in your microwave
How much are you talking about?
2nd winter for the 5 pepper varieties I’m saving- Bell(North Star), Long Italian Red(Thunderbolt), Jalapeño M(only 5,000 Scoville units… kinda mild for us but a heavy producer) and a Big Balm globe shaped one…. also kept over an ornamental pepper that is loaded with color.(red, white, orange- “fun one”-guess they can be eaten but might be hot?)
*Pepper Geek* - You said, “Prevention” for pest control- You are so right about cleaning your plants and getting new soil before bringing them indoors- I had a horrible issue w/aphids this spring before I could get the plants outside the house. ~5 sprayings… grrr… started wondering if I even liked peppers… LOL… All pepper plants grew as fabulous as I had imagined… love to grow them now… ,
Much thanks for Pepper Geek wisdom,
Pepper-Head Phread 🐸
Haha! Pests can definitely make you question how much you like to garden..but glad you persevered ;)
Awesome video, been following for a while, don't think I've commented before. I'm in the southwest of the UK and our winters can be very cold sometimes and snow is rare but does happen. I've got a large desk in the lounge and I've bought a cheap grow light (budget is almost nothing at the moment) and this is my first year of growing anything let alone peppers/chillies. As the nights are starting to draw in colder, I've started to bring my plants in overnight and in the evenings they get a little of the grow lamp which gets switched off before bed.
In the morning they get taken outside and placed in the sun and if the temperature ever drops too much they come back indoors. Have you ever tried this? The reason I'm trying this is because these plants I got cheap (reduced stock) from a couple shops and only my Apache has had fruit ripen. The other plants have fruit but still green and a couple are only just starting to ripen so eager to try and get these to finish off.
You can definitely wait longer to prepare for overwintering if you want some pods to ripen! You can just bring the plants into a garage overnight on colder nights until you're ready to prune it back. Thanks for watching btw!
whenever I did this I would just stick the root ball in a bucket of water instead of using the hose, after about 30 seconds of kneading the rootball the excess dirt comes off easy, and it seems less stressful on the rootball, just an FYI, Gotta keep them peppers!!!!! Great channel
Thank you for all the info! The season went too fast, I can't wait til next year
You're not alone, we're already planning varieties for next year's grow ;)
This is the best video I have seen on overwintering plants.
Thank you!!!
Thank you so much for this video! I have a habanero plant that did amazing this year and was hating the thought of pulling it!
Cool! I have a habanero that grew out instead of up and gave a ton of pods. I'm planning on overwintering it along with a couple of others types. God bless y'all!!
Good luck with the overwintering!
Good to see you outside for once
Would you do a follow up on how your over wintered pepper plants shown here? What they look like in the spring/summer?
Another 5 star video with pro tips for days....kind thanks to you.
Hey guys, I followed your guidelines for overwintering peppers for the first time (Zone 7B). Am starting to get new growth on three of the eight plants so far, and am wondering whether to trim off any of the branches that aren't yet growing, or wait a bit longer, or just leave them? Would love to see an update on the plants you overwintered too, when the timing is appropriate for your zone. Thanks, Steve
I am curious about this too. I have been plucking off the leaves but now that it is almost a month before my last frost date I have it in a bit more ambient light and am just going to let grow whatever leaves start. Although to be honest I might have not watered it (a Tabasco plant) enough. The branches are pretty brown looking. I was doing so well with them being more green than brown but with it finally starting to warm up I didn't think to increase the water 😬. Hoping it'll revive.
@@michelemaddix i just leave them alone if they start growing some then so be it. A few leaves wont hurt unless your paranoid bugs are going to come in.
I just spray the plant with a insecticide for overwinter and dont have to worry about anything on the few leaves i keep. The only thing i cut off is flowers until spring.
@@brianfitch5469 thanks. I was just about successful in overwintering one Tabasco plant. But then I forgot to water it the last month before it could go back outside. I was busy getting stuff ready for the garden season and totally neglected the poor thing. 😕
yes did 5 last year 1 survived. but i didn't take all the proper steps..can't wait to give it a go again..thx love your channel
Ladybugs and Sevin dust , for the past 15 years . I get peppers year round without repotting . Only water and fertilize . Herbs and tomatoes too !
Every word mattered. That's what I call a excellent tutorial. Thank you.
Perfect timing on this video; I was just thinking about trying to overwinter peppers for the first time this year as the first frost date rapidly approaches. Great information
Great to hear, good luck!
I will overwinter my cherry bomb peppers this year. They are wonderful roasted and pickled, and make wonderful Louisiana style hot sauce. Thanks for the thorough explanation!
Perfect timing and you answered every question I had on overwintering. Thank you for another great video!
Perfect video!
This is such great information, and it just always reminds me of growing weed. Literally all of these principles apply to weed.
A ~3" layer of vermiculite on the top and bottom of the container will make it really hard for fungus gnats to find a home/keep living in the dirt btw.
Thanks for sharing - another commenter said they used sand for the same purpose, we'll try it
I do that too!
Yes, a layer of sand and then top it off with a layer of cedar bedding. I do this when bringing my house plants inside in the early fall
What do you mean by “the bottom” of the container ? On the outside of the already potted plant ?
I didn't overwinter though I pruned my pepper plant. The tips of the older leaves have gone brown and dropping but new leaves are growing nicely. The plant produced peppers all winter and still is through spring and summer. So far I have taken off about 40 peppers with about another 40 on the plant.
Instead of cleaning and repotting you can just top your pots with an inch or so of sand to smother any larvae before they can emerge and continue reproduction and keep some Castile neem spray handy!
Thanks for sharing this technique
I thought so last year but learned the hard way that it’s not necessarily true. Fought the Great Aphid War all winter of 2020 and it was no fun.
@@Chuckbobuck201 if you have a healthy population of ‘hypoaspis miles’ in your soil ecology they will not allow aphid larvae to proliferate in your soil. That being said I’m not 100% sure it’s a good idea but I have two huge potted pepper plants overwintering in my front room and I will let you know if I have any issues before spring!
Excellent & very thorough video Thank you!! I have an 8' x 4' raised pepper bed it's a packed 'forest' of 6 types of pepper plants thriving & prolific, I will hate to see them die, especially knowing they have the ability to be perennial. First frost in my area of NJ is expected in a few weeks. I would love to try overwintering at least a few.
I have to admit, this made me nervous to try, but my serrano plants did so well this year, I hate to lose them 😩
Thank you. I'll try this with most, if not all my peppers.
Thank you for all of the information on your channel! A question for you:
I’ve overwintered my Chocolate Reaper successfully for two seasons now, and this year, it has started leafing out inside in early December. Should I continue to prune the leaves, or is it best to let it do it’s thing inside while waiting for Spring? Thank you in advance.
I am going to give this a try. We live in NW Montana so our growing season is short, 3 months. We grow most of our garden in a high tunnel, unheated so as soon as the first frost hits it's curtains for most of the crops. Thanks for the video.
It was 80 degrees yesterday, but dropped to 52 last night. I picked off most of the tomatoes & okra, but the peppers were still green. I’m not picking them until they finish turning red & yellow. I had several poblano & cayenne I left out there in the ground. Turnip greens & turnips will be ok. 🫑
I've seen many videos of preparing the plants for over-wintering, and all the info is similar and easy to follow. However, I can't find any info on how to monitor and care for the plant when it should be dormant. What do you do if it starts to bud and shoot? How can you tell if the plant is suffering or dying? Are there other considerations to be aware of during the winter months? Thanks for all the fantastic videos!
We w was
@@BeatrixKiddo Thanks for the reply. We get very little natural light in the winter, so my fear is that instead of hibernating the stalks just dry up and die. However, I'm reluctant to use a grow light because I do not want to stimulate growth indoors during the winter.
@@BeatrixKiddo sounds like good advice that I'll likely follow unless Pepper Geek chimes in with something contradictory. Thanks for the time and effort of your reply. 🤝
you over winter exactly the same way I do, nice. I don't think you can kill a pepper plant tbh. I've had some live up to 6-7 years doing it this way. Great information, I can confirm, it works.
This worked so well. This year I replanted about 10 plants. What was super crazy, every variety grew fast and went to red almost immediately. I have a bush of jalapeños that all went red. I had cubanelles that went all red too. Was amazing. Can’t believe the plants now look like trees with bark.
That's great to hear - they can really take off fast with a strong root system.
@@PepperGeek now the question is do I take them to 3rd year? I did have a really bad bout with fungus gnats and I put them in a grow tent because my garage is too cold. Now my grow tent has a sundew (carnivorous plant) so that may help. They wanted to flower so badly. I also made a bonsai out of one. That was pretty cool.
@@DanielMerk23 i use Mosquito Bits for gnats, it works wonders to keep them out of my houseplants.
@@DanielMerk23 You should try it, I believe he said some can go 4-5 years or longer.
@@DanielMerk23 Fruit Fly Sticky Traps are about 50 cents a piece and work pretty well to keep gnats in check but won't eliminate them. I had fungus gnats with my seedlings this spring. Just to give the plants a bit of relief I hung a couple around my trays with an oscillating fan blowing the gnats onto the traps. Killed hundreds of them without any chemicals touching the plants. I used the "Gideal 20-Pack Dual-Sided Yellow Sticky Traps", $8-9 on Amazon for a 20 pack. I don't like them outdoors without some sort of guard because removing a suffering bird from a sticky trap is an awful experience.
I have a Chiletepin from last year that successfully survived! Let's go for two years!
Also will be trying to over-winter a couple of Indian long hot peppers (these peppers can grow to 12" long or more!)