Overwintering peppers and chillies

[The Large One]

visited seaspring seeds open day last year and they had a whole polly tunnel (commercial type not small) which was totally infested with aphids, Joy missed biological control by a couple days and lost the lot, unable to sell the peppers as the sticky residue from their feeding collected all the mould spors in the air and looked like they all had a case of measels
as a quick organic method to rid the odd plany of aphids, take it outside, hold it upside down with the crown of the plant near the ground and spray with the hose pipe on quite a high pressure but fine and you blow the nasties off...repeat when needed
here's mine in the heated greenhouse..get covered in fleece at night extra

[Nes]

Overwintering two - a purple jalapeno and satan's kiss. Cut them both back to about 10" when dug out of GH border and repotted. Regularly smothered in greenfly, and dropping muck and stickiness all over the windowsill, in spite of regular(ish) squishing and occasionally washing the whole plant in cool soapy water. Got fed up with the mess, so have relegated both to cold porch. Were doing pretty well on windowsill: new leaves, flower buds forming (though no fruits - I haven't fed them at all). Seem to be surviving colder conditions, in spite of lack of tlc. Hoping to move them out into greenhouse soon, but not wanting to introduce greenfly in there until I can guarantee finding a couple of ladybirds to go in there with them!

[shirleycox]

I have a Starfish Pepper and a Peppadew Pepper that have lived happily in my south facing bay window for four years. They're currently about five feet tall and quite lush with greenery. They flower and fruit on a regular basis. I've had problems with both greenfly and whitefly in the past though. Not so bad with only two plants (if you're vigilant) but I imagine it would be painful if you had a lot of them!

Take a bucket of water. Wash your hands in it using soap. Cover the soil in the pot with a piece of paper. Turn it upside down over the bucket and immerse the plant in the slightly soapy water and hold it there for 2 minutes. If the plants are in the garden, wash the greenfly off with soapy water.

Whitefly are far more difficult to get rid of. You can drown or wash off the larvae (little white scales under the leaves) but the adults will fly off and come back later. You can get rid of them with a systemic insecticide, but that's not organic and you wouldn't want to eat the fruit afterwards.

[Mrs Dobby]

First pepper of the year is now growing on one of the overwintering peppers in the lounge window, must be 1/2" big so far, looks like a possible early crop )

[maytreefrannie]

Many thanks to everyone for this helpful thread - I've sent several of the comments on to my daughter, who keeps peppers and chillies on the windowsill over winter and they're (the plants) are slow in perking up.

[keepitgreen]

Chilli plants can last up to 3 years (probably longer) I cut mine back in he autum and they always start sprouting again in the spring. I find that I have good years with thousands of chilli's and then bad years. I think that has something to do with how distracted I am with the other 50 projects that I try to do at the same time!! I have chilli plants growing in ever window at the moment (even the toilet!)

[chris]

Missed this first time around. From my (limited) experiment of overwintering, in the 3rd year the plant (apache I think) lost a lot of it's vigour. Quite amazing really though, the whole dormancy thing.

[chris]

Chilli plants can last up to 3 years (probably longer) I cut mine back in he autum and they always start sprouting again in the spring. I find that I have good years with thousands of chilli's and then bad years. I think that has something to do with how distracted I am with the other 50 projects that I try to do at the same time!! I have chilli plants growing in ever window at the moment (even the toilet!)

Bleh, hadn't read that when I replied.

I trimmed mine back heavily each year, worked well for me

[Thelma Sanders]

My pepper has new leaves, and even some flower buds! I treated it to a day trip to the greenhouse today as it was warm.

It's safely back home now though