Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: Potty Plotty Lotty on July 27, 2015, 12:42
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Last year I successfully overwintered some pepper plants indoors and harvested my first red peppers from the cold frame at the weekend. :D
I'm planning to do the same this year with some seed I sowed in March which should give me a harvest in the next month or two but I was wondering whether there would be a problem with sowing some seeds now so they are smaller plants to get through the winter (ie less windowsill space than the 2L pots I overwintered last year)... I was thinking of 3-5" pots.
Any thoughts?
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I don't think that would work very well as the advantage of overwintering them is that you have a full sized plant ready to spurt into growth when the day length increases. If you overwinter a small plant, then it still has to put on loads of growth before it starts fruiting. I'd also worry that a young plant would be more prone to rotting over the winter and be less resilient to being left to dry out. Maybe there's a happy medium where they get to a half decent size, but not full size. Always worth an experiment :)
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You could try a couple of plants to see how it goes, PPL.
I have some overwintered sweet peppers that have been fruiting for weeks now (Sweet Banana), and I cut the plant back quite hard at the end of last season. This way it did not take up too much space in the winter. You could perhaps try this with one of your large plants too?
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Thanks-I'll try some sowings now as an experiment.
Sunshine-what do you define as end of last season? Last year the ones I pruned in the autumn (haven't made a note of exactly when!) didn't make it through but the ones I left un-pruned were OK and I'm now harvesting red peppers on them both (Lipstick and Slovakia).