Chillies - what are you growing/overwintering?

[JusPotterinTim]

I would be careful about watering if you do hack a plant back, there is a massive rootball and not much greenery to lose the moisture. Let it dry out a bit and water sparingly, until you have lots of greenery on top - just make sure it doesn't wilt, water a bit more if it does.

If you water heavily after pruning before lots of new growth has occurred then the plant could really sulk as its roots are sucking up the moisture and the plant doesn't know what to do with it, you could get leaf drop, or even root rot if the soil stays water logged for ages.

[Small pumpkin]

However for mine it is like summer again, it's 20C-30C in their grow zone, with a light level and exposure time each day enough to keep them growing moderately. They seem to be doing better than that, with dozens of new leaves on all of them now, I think even though the light isn't perfect, the fairly stable temperature is helping them get the most out of it. I could put the lights on for longer and get more growth, but they're growing fast already and I don't want to spend more on electricity out of principle really, unless I have to.

Personally I would give them at least a couple of months off from working so hard.

[JusPotterinTim]

They're getting worked hard I'm afraid, they show no signs of exhaustion just yet!

[Scarlet]

If you wanted them to work hard, why prune heavily? I can't understand why you would do that if you want it to carry on fruiting? Instead of producing a heavy flush of flowers it now has to grow new leaves, stems and flowers.

[JusPotterinTim]

A few reasons I chose to prune them:

- Space, they haven't got much space.
- The light from the grow lights diminishes a lot as you drop say 10cm further, so I would have a canopy with lots of growth and a hollow plant underneath. the grow lights encourage a very dense plant so it's ideal to prune them to give them dense growth, where even the bottom leaves are close to the lights and getting a half decent light level.
- Diseases, I have seen some discolouration on some of the leaves so I have applied fungicide and am trying to ensure to contact of old leaves with new ones, just in case, and will pull off the old leaves once the new ones are a bit bigger.

Yes pruning will probably hurth the yield quite a bit, but it should give me compact plants that can utilise the grow lights effectively, look tidy, don't have leaf diseases hopefully and fit in the mini greenhouse next year. I want a half decent crop but I'm not going for masses of pods, a few dozen over the winter will be great.

So yes I want them to work hard from now on, but I don't want them too gangly and moth eaten at the same time. The way they are now is effectively like they're one month old seedlings, but with a much better root system to support faster growth.

[Philthy]

However, I have read advice for overwintering chillies to hack them right down to a stump once the leaves have shed, this applies when light levels drop massively with no grow lights, and without letting the cold get to to them (<6C is when the damage occurs I think). In the stump form they can allegedly survive winter and will put on new growth over spring, if kept indoors in a cool spot, I don't think annums are meant to be the best for coming back though

When preparing my plants for overwintering I aim to reduce the foliage by around half, possibly 2/3 if the plant grew particularly well during summer and got really big. Quite simply it means there is less work for the plant to do the following spring; it has an established root system, established structure, and therefore lots of opportunities for new shoots. Given our relatively short growing season in the UK time spent re-growing branches IMO kind of negates the point of overwintering in the first place.
Also, any diseases that might attack the plant would be on the main stem straight away if just a stump - if there were more of a framework left chances are you'd spot symptoms on the plants' extremities first and have a chance to deal with them before the heart of the plant was compromised.
(I do appreciate not everyone is prepared or able to give over the space required during winter months for more than a couple of plants if they haven't been cut back considerably first).
I definitely concur with the opinion on overwintering of annums though; it's almost never worth the effort and not necessary anyway considering the growth rates and ease of growing of this group of plants.

Yes pruning will probably hurth the yield quite a bit, but it should give me compact plants that can utilise the grow lights effectively, look tidy, don't have leaf diseases hopefully and fit in the mini greenhouse next year. I want a half decent crop but I'm not going for masses of pods, a few dozen over the winter will be great

Do you plan to keep your plants actively growing throughout winter then?
If so I think you might struggle to keep them going into next year without that period of shutdown.

[Scarlet]

Do you plan to keep your plants actively growing throughout winter then?
If so I think you might struggle to keep them going into next year without that period of shutdown.

I agree, I think they will need a dormant period to flourish next year. Perennial plants should have a rest and recoup over ŵinter they may well be too exhausted to carry on in Spring if made to fruit outside of its natural yearly life cycle.
Though it willbe interesting to see how many will fruit and what happens in Spring.

Philthy, have you grown the Numex Bailey Piquin? The seeds you sent I didn't plant til maybe first week of March but it's grown so well. Really impressed with it, although most pods are still green I've got it inside to ripen them up. I will be growing that one again next year and starting much earlier.

[Philthy]

Philthy, have you grown the Numex Bailey Piquin? The seeds you sent I didn't plant til maybe first week of March but it's grown so well. Really impressed with it, although most pods are still green I've got it inside to ripen them up. I will be growing that one again next year and starting much earlier.

Hi Scarlet (long time no speak )
No I haven't grown that one, but I'm glad it proved so successful for you. I think I got the seeds as part of a deal for buying a certain number of packets from one of the online retailers. I looked up the Bailey Piquin though and decided I wasn't too fussed about growing it myself as the pods on it look fairly small, i.e. Twilight sized. I only grow small podded plants if there is an added benefit to doing so, which for me is usually if the variety offers strong ornamental appeal, as I'm not interested in picking the fruits for culinary use. Twilight I've grown several times because it is so colourful, and Black Pearl is another small podded favourite thanks to the dark purple stems and leaves.
The Piquin plant is apparently unique though in that once it's fruits are ripe it drops them much like an apple tree does. Perhaps I should give the variety another consideration; I like plants that are a little unusual.

My stars for this year have been habaneros; Monster and Chocolate, and also my 3 year old Fatalii has proven itself once again to be an excellent and consistent cropper. I've not been in my GH hardly at all these last couple of months; TBH the problems I had with greenfly this year pretty much had me abandoning the plants to their fate as I found it so frustrating watching their gradual deterioration.
I normally take a few photos so I have a visual diary year on year of what I've grown, but I've not done that this time around as drooping leaves covered in powdery sooty mould aren't what I want a record of.
I still have maybe 30% of the crop still to pick!
I was in there yesterday though and feared the worse after successive cold nights of late, but was very relieved to see that all plants seem free of cold damage and are getting on with the business of leaf shedding. I think the coincidental lack of water probably helped a lot. So I can still carry out my annual prune and choose the plants to keep over the winter months. And no sign of any greenfly either!

[Scarlet]

I was going to overwinter one of manzano plants but it got hit by frost last week I love small podded chillies!

Ive got royal black, very ornamental, really dark purple almost black leaves and the chillies look like enormous holly berries. It is an annum but very slow growing. I'm going to try to get that through ŵinter. Ive not got much choice as I should have selected my plants and got them indoors before the cold weather hit. I am in Wiltshire but my GH is very exposed.

# it's good to see you back!

[JusPotterinTim]

Good stuff, this is all very much food for thought.

Regarding the level of pruning for overwintering you talked about Philthy, I think that yes the more nodes left then the more spots the plant can sprout from, however even with a harsh prune to between 10-20cm I can see adequate sites for new leaves and branches to form on mine. Of course yes mine aren't ever going to be monsters, they're only in 3 and 6 litre pots, so there's only so much growth the roots and growing medium can support.

The main trunk of the plant and it's root system is the conduit that can support the new growth, so I see keeping this established trunk as a benefit of overwintering, giving a headstart, even in annums. However, if a good sized seedling can be grown from scratch indoors in spring before the light levels and warmth are high enough for outdoor growing or greenhouse growing, then yes, overwintering annums might be a bit unnecessary. It will help avoid diseases lingering which can happen in an older plant.

It has been touched upon by yousefl, Scarlet and Small Pumpkin the chillies need a dormant period, I was not aware of this. I know this is essential in some plants (strawberries for example), along with chill hours in some cases. I might be mistaken by I am under the impression that chillies can grow for 12 months a year where conditions are more ideal, e.g. closer to the equator where there are less light/heat fluctuations throughout the year, and they grow as perennials. My thinking is that the leaf drop and dormancy is a survival technique, but not a necessary process needed for healthy growth in consecutive years. In this country most people have no choice due to the weather and light levels, they have to scrap plants off or allow them to go dormant.

Anyhow, I guess the proof of the pudding will be how mine fare over the winter and into next year.

If mine keel over next year or stop growing and podding, then this will support that theory.

I hope to provide pictures of how they're doing every month or so over the winter, so this will hopefully be interesting for all observers.

[JusPotterinTim]

Scarlet, one of the Bulgarian Carrot's is colouring up now so I hope to be able to give an opinion within a week on what it's like. It's only a dwarf one as it got cooler when the pods were developing which kept them small.

[Small pumpkin]

Well I've gone and done it again ! I've dragged another chilli into the house that I was going to compost. Again it's been cut back brutally but I'll give it a go. So now my ghost is in the spare room.

[Scarlet]

Good girl !

[jackarmy]

Ive cut my last red manzano back a while ago scarlet.
its still in the greenhouse ( and will stay there) but its looking incredibly healthy, i may build another mini gh around it but i think i may just see how it pans out.

[Mitzi]

- Diseases, I have seen some discolouration on some of the leaves so I have applied fungicide and am trying to ensure to contact of old leaves with new ones, just in case, and will pull off the old leaves once the new ones are a bit bigger.

.

Can you recommend a fungicide? I want to use one on my overwintering plants but don't know what's best.