Overwintering sweet peppers advice needed

[mrsbusy]

Hi. I got a 99p bargain earlier in summer from Waitrose - a lunchbox pepper plant on its last legs for lack of water and no support. It is now magnificent!! Producing lots of quite large fruit really well.
I would like to keep it overwinter - is it likely to survive? I have an unheated greenhouse or I could bring it indoors but it is rather larg
about 3 ft tall and bushy.

[SimpleSimon]

It might survive indoors. You wanna prune it right back hard so I wouldn’t worry about the size. Loads of vids on you tube.

one thing I would highly recommend tho is killing everything in the root ball. There is a high chance you’ll bring insects indoors that will hatch and be a proper pain. Aphids in your house are no fun.

Edit… one way to avoid all of this is to take a few cuttings and over winter those instead. No insects and they are nice and small. And you can multiply the plant.

[peanut]

I tried to over winter several lunchbox pepper plants last winter. Not one survived.

[ameno]

I've had reasonable success overwintering potted pepper plants in my conservatory for the last two years. It gets pretty cool in there over night at times (down to 4-5c), but it's never frosty.
There have thus far all but one survived, although they don't get going again particularly early, giving maybe 2 weeks at most headstart over seed-sown ones. They do usually crop more heavily that seed-sown ones, though.
I've also found that some varieties overwinter better than others. Although all seem to survive, certain varieties never grow back strongly, and produce a smaller crop in year 2 than they did in year 1.

Indoors in a cool-ish room would probably be the best place to overwinter yours. The greenhouse might work if you could guarantee it be frost free, but if there's any chance of frost in there then don't bother.
I would actually recommend not pruning it back. I've always had better results with mine through not pruning before overwintering. Some leaf loss and die back is likely over winter, so once new growth begins in the spring you can prune them a bit then.

[FromYorkshiretoBucks]

One thing I’ve seen mentioned a lot on the chilli growers Reddit is to remove the plant from the pot, clean off the root ball and then repot in some house plant compost for the winter. I’m going to give this a try with a couple of mine this year.