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As the growing season winds down, it’s easy to think your pepper and chilli plants have finished for the year, but with the right care they can keep producing for seasons to come. This week, I’ve been preparing 3 pepper plants for overwintering and sharing over my YouTube channel on how to give them the best chance of surviving the cold months and bursting back into growth next spring.
I’ve chosen three plants to overwinter, a Bell Pepper, a Chilli Pepper, and a smaller late-growing chilli that didn’t quite reach the same size as the others. It’ll be interesting to see how they each cope and compare once spring arrives.
The first step is always to prune them back hard, removing around half the growth and leaving just a few strong stems. This helps the plants focus on their roots and main structure rather than maintaining excess foliage. It looks brutal and it is but this is the only way your plants will survive the winter and help them go into a dormant state..
This year, rather than keeping them in the greenhouse, I’ve decided to try something different by storing them in an outside coal shed (a very Northern thing to have in older style properties). It’s cool, sheltered, and has very little natural light, which should encourage the plants to go into full dormancy over winter. The consistent temperature means they won’t experience harsh frosts or wild fluctuations, both of which can damage overwintering plants.
During the coming months, I’ll water just occasionally as the plants only require enough to stop the roots drying out completely but not too much so they wake the plants up too soon and start producing new growth. If all goes well, they should stay dormant through the winter, ready to spring back to life when the weather warms up.
Overwintering peppers this way not only saves time and money but also gives you stronger plants with a head start next year. With luck, these three will be the first to fruit when the next growing season begins.
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