Chillis in greenhouse over winter?

[Alison]

Have tried this in the past but have just treated them as annuals for the past couple of years - too many plants inside already. Anyway when I have brought them in have had most success with ones with small leaves and a naturally neat habit eg prairie fire which seemed to adapt to being a house plant like it was totally natural but suppose it depends on the climate in your house!

[rustylady]

Chillies are a bit like tomatoes I'm afraid, not really perennial. You may be lucky and overwinter them but you won't get good results the second year. It's much better to start afresh next year with new seed. (You can sow seed saved from this year's crop although the may not come true to type)

[dexterdoglancashire]

Thanks for that RL - I wasn't sure.....if they continue to look a bit ill, then they'll have to go. DDL

[kaiser0790]

overwintering chillies

can anyone please tell me if i let them dry out or not and do leaves fall off
thanks

[JILLY JACKSON]

My neighbour gave me one chilli plant a few months ago.It has done so well,actually better than all hers.Problem is ive never grown chilli before or used it except once or twice with the powdered stuff from the supermarket.Neighbour says she grew two types,cayenne,and jalpeyno? No idea which one she gave me.Darling son said to break one off and take a bite then tell him what it tasted like.Did that ,it tasted of nothing.He says its cayenne then or it would have been rather different.(said shrieking with laughter i may add!)te chillies are green,do i wait for them to go red?What then?Any ideas?offered them back to the neighbour but she doesnt want them.Oh sorry,think i should have written this elsewhere.can you mods sort it?

[deezyb]

as far as I can know, teh cayenne are long skinny ones (grow drooping down), and the jalapeno are more fat/squat shaped (grow pointing up the way it seems) . You can pick them green, or leave until they go red! The redder they are the hotter they are!!

Also if you hang your plants upside down by the roots, the remaining chillies will mature - not that I knew that really, just re-read it today in the GYO mag from last Sept!

[unconcerned]

"Chillies are a bit like tomatoes I'm afraid, not really perennial. You may be lucky and overwinter them but you won't get good results the second year."

Sorry, can I just point out that this is untrue. They are perennial, though the majority do need more heat and light than a British winter tends to give. Overwintered indoors though, they are usually fine. More than that you often get better results in the second year. Indeed my overwintered peppers have produced roughly four times as many peppers as last year. If you have a plant with an established root system in spring, it will quickly outgrow a new seedling. Perhaps rustylady had some bad luck or didn't get the feeding/watering/lighting/heating correct.

[Alison]

My main objection with overwintering in this country is the space issue ie I don't have enough space inside to to it with larger plants and I'm not willing to use a lot of energy heating a greenhouse all winter as I consider it rather wasteful and unnecessary for the householder. I do however have a very healthy looking Prairie Fire which is in it's second year and absolutley covered in chillies. It spent last summer on the patio in a tub and got a bit of frost damage when I didn't bring it in in time. However, a winter in the conservatory, a spring repot and good feed has got it going great guns and it'll be over wintered again this year - much easier for a small plant than some of my larger ones. May also be keeping a Purple Tiger this year as they took so long to get started this spring.

[minicrank]

I was given a chilli plant last year that I basically forgot about and come September, feeling very guilty, I re-potted it into a 12" pot, gave it some TLC and brought it inside and placed it in my front window. (My house is North facing I think). To my surprise it flowered and without a word of a lie I picked fresh chillis from the plant all winter long. I was so impressed with this I have started to grow some more chillis now to do the same this winter.

The only problem I had was that come spring it was rather infested with pesky little flies and I did give it the heave ho - and then after that found out that chillis can grow for more that one year !!!(Loud Groan)

[milly2306]

hi
did you prune it or anything? i want to try and keep my chilli plants this year so any advice or tips greatly appreciated.
xxxmillyxxx

[amandaandherveg]

I'm growing them for the first time this year and started them quite late. I'm keen to overwinter them too if I can. It's been so cold and dark here over the last month I don't hold out much hope of having a crop this year.

[minicrank]

No I didn't but as I said I am no expert I didn't even realise it it was a perenial (I think that is the word). But once it got to a reasonable size it did not grow anymore (controlled by the size of the pot maybe ?) - but as I said it did produce chillis all through the winter which was amazing !

[BrideXIII]

I am going to try overwintering indoors this year< I don't usually>, what i do most times is grab the last two ripe ones, de-seed dry and plant again in spring.
i always end up with too many plants ( at present we have 5 varieties a total of 50 plants all over the place), so it has never seemed necessary to overwinter, so this is just an experiment, all available windowsill space is taken up, with rooms at varying temps, we shall see what happens.

[Nicos]

I only had 2 plants this year- one has been rubbish- the other is just coming into flower!!!!

The latter has been dug up and put into a plantpot to come indoors for the winter. I wonder if I should remove the flowers or let it do it's own thing???
First time for me too BrideXIII. (Well done the rest of you on your Success!)

[kentvegplot]

Overwintered 'Filius Blue' last year - it's a small plant anyway, worked well in the house. Others were in ghouse, but I think they got too cold. This year a few will come in to the utility room, but I'll have lots of seeds anyway for next year.