[shokkyy]

I again kept a few chilli plants alive through the winter this year, but whereas in prior years I've always picked the fruit and pruned the plants back, this year I left them alone and stuck them in a spare bedroom so I could keep on picking fresh fruit. The plants do look a bit sorry for themselves, with patchy leaves and quite a few dropped leaves, but I'm also finding that the fruit have just completely lost their heat. One is a habanero that was scorching hot when I first started picking them, but now they're completely wimpy. The radiator in that room is on a low setting and I have been watering them now and then with liquid tomato feed.

Anyone know what's causing this? Is it just because the fruit has been on the plant a long time? Not warm enough, not enough light? Too much/too little water/feed? I have now brought them into the utility room where it's toasty warm and they have more light, but don't know if that will at least stop the dropping leaves.

[Steveharford]

I don't know but it might simply be that, like us, plants need a period of dormancy/ sleep to become rejuvenated. I bet if you stopped feeding it and forced it to rest it would come back with renewed vigour when it is ready.

[bravemurphy]

I have tried for a few years now and they just seem to give up around this time of year for me for no apparent reason.

I put mine down to lack of natural light.

[shokkyy]

I've never had trouble keeping them alive through winter if I pruned them back in autumn, always seem to come back in the spring.  Maybe the fruit lost their heat because they have less juice because the plants aren't in active growth, or something like that, though in that case you'd expect dried chillis to lose their heat and they don't.

Wonder if it'd be okay to prune them back now, before repotting with fresh compost, because they should be starting to go back into growth any time now. They should be warm enough in my utility room, snuggled up to the boiler. Maybe the leaves just needed to die because they're old. But I thought I remembered someone on this forum saying they'd kept chillis active and fruiting all through winter, and that's what made me try it, because chillis picked fresh are much nicer to cook with than dried chillis.

[Kate and her Ducks]

I had also been told that feeding chills tends to reduce their heat and certainly ones I feed through the summer are not as hot as ones I didn't but if you fed through the summer too it won't be that.

[crh75]

If they survive until the summer they'll start producing hot chillies again.  I find the hotter the summer the hotter the Chillies

[gavinjconway]

I would assume that like anything they do come to an end of life sometime and have to go dormant.... hence you need to trim them, overwinter and then get going again in spring.