Overwintering Peppers - Keep Your Plants Alive for Years - Pepper Geek

hey there welcome back to pepper geek today's video is all about overwintering pepper plants so what is overwintering basically it's the process of bringing your outdoor pepper plants indoors keeping them alive through the colder months and then reintroducing them outdoors next spring most people who want to do this are just going to keep the plants dormant and indoors in a cooler room maybe a garage or a breezeway of some sort just to keep the plants alive but not producing fruits while they're indoors that doesn't mean your plants can't produce fruits while they're indoors but it does require a few extra steps and a grow light so in this video we're going to cover the benefits of overwintering why you might want to do it to begin with and some of the drawbacks then we'll cover our detailed process of overwintering from start to finish and show you exactly how we do it and then we'll finish up with some common questions that we've seen on our channel in the comments section over the last several months but first check out geeky greenhouse our other gardening channel that is dedicated to anything that's not pepper related so we're building a table right now for our indoor downstairs gardening setup and we're going to show you how we did that so if you're interested in fun gardening projects like that and other vegetables check out geeky greenhouse in the description below okay so let's start with the benefits of overwintering why you might want to do it to begin with and number one is that you can preserve a well-loved plant if you're growing something unique special to you you know you've grown an attachment to your pepper plant you can keep it alive because after all peppers are perennial plants in nature they come from a tropical climate where winters are non-existent so most pepper varieties can stay alive happily for four or five years if you don't run into disease issues or anything else that might kill the plant so if you've given a name to your pepper plant and you just don't want to see it go at the end of the year you can keep it alive for multiple seasons if you like the other reason is you're going to give the plant a head start in the springtime so all the plants that you start from seed in the spring are going to be relatively small but your overwintered plant will already have a more established root system and thus will bounce back in the spring weather more quickly and this will just happen naturally your plants are going to react to the higher temperatures and the increased light exposure in the springtime and you'll see this beautiful transformation from a relatively dead looking pepper plant back to a happy healthy bushy pepper plant at least that's the goal and the last reason you might want to do this and this is optional is to grow peppers indoors over the winter you will need to provide artificial light if you'd like to get any sort of sizable harvest so just keep that in mind but for the most part the goal is to just hibernate the plant and keep it alive but not really producing leaves not really growing at all just in a dormant state until it's ready to go out next spring so that leads us to some of the drawbacks and the most prevalent drawback is pests when you take any plant matter and soil indoors from the outdoors there's always some risk of bringing in pests you've got eggs you've got larvae it's always a risk so we do a lot to try to mitigate that problem the best way to deal with any indoor pest infestation is to just prevent it to begin with so we'll show you exactly what we do to accomplish this and the only other drawback is that it takes a little bit of additional work if you're letting your plants die you basically just uproot them and throw them onto your compost pile or into the woods to decompose but for overwintering you do have to do a little bit more you're going to need some fresh soil you'll need to clean your pots and you'll need to do some transplanting as you'll see soon now you can overwinter a potted plant you can overwinter a plant that's been planted in the ground or in a raised bed it really doesn't matter the process is going to look the same so with that overview let's get started over wintering our peppers okay so we're going to start with some fresh potting soil just get potting soil directly from your local nursery just make sure it's fresh it's out of a bag because you'll have less likelihood of introducing those pathogens or bugs into your indoor growing space i'm just putting it into a mixing bowl here i'm just going to pre-moisten it a little bit just to get it to a point where it's moist damp but not overly soaked so now just a little bit of water and mix it thoroughly we do this whenever we're planting planting seeds transplanting peppers it's just to make sure that the soil doesn't become hydrophobic and every time you water going forward it will easily accept the water throughout that looks good to me sticks together but it's not dripping water when you squeeze it it's just enough to hold the water it'll be a good medium to move our plants into so now here's our pot again it's about a half a gallon it's not too big we're going to be downsizing this plant into this pot just make sure your pot is clean you want to look underneath the rim below at the bottom of the planter especially if it was sitting outside you want to make sure that you get rid of any possibility of bugs so i'm going to add soil just to about maybe a third of the way just maybe an inch or two from the bottom of the pot and leave it relatively loose and we're going to leave this stuff indoors and then we're going to go prepare the plant bring it inside and finish up inside okay so here we are this is our numex suave orange pepper plant and it's loaded with ripe peppers and the first thing we're going to do is harvest all the ripe peppers and the unripe peppers so these look like spicy peppers but they're actually not spicy at all maybe just a little touch of heat but they taste like habaneros so awesome peppers okay so now the hard part we have to prune back the plant i'm just going to start by removing this steak which is actually a stick we ran out of real steaks so that works and we're basically going to prune back all of the branches and all of the leaves leaving just a couple of forks on the main stem now this is going to look really traumatic but we've seen plants come back from no leaves before pepper plants are very resilient and this is going to give your plants the best shot at surviving the winter and avoiding pests so this plant is actually a perfect example for bringing in doors because there's really no foliage below the first fork that we'll have to remove so we don't have to worry about that and we're just going to leave this initial fork and then we're going to keep these two as well and cut just above this node on every side try to get a nice clean cut you don't want the plant stressing over wounds just like that and on the other side the same thing right above that node and this side we got two to cut off so we have a few leaves left i'm just going to remove all of them because aphids and other pests will feed on the leaves and they'll be hiding in there so you really need to remove every piece of foliage again it looks traumatic your plant goes from a bush to a stump but like i said peppers have no problem coming back from this state it's one tiny leaf down here and get rid of that too so there's plenty of life left in this plant you may think you've just killed your pepper plant but you really haven't a lot of the life is in the root system that strong root system and this strong base has everything it needs to come back to a full-fledged pepper plant and it'll be even stronger next year now one thing i want to mention at this time is propagating some people have asked us can you propagate or clone peppers from a branch and the answer is yes it just does take a while many pepper varieties can take a month or longer just to sprout roots but you can take these branches put them in some water next to a window and wait for the roots to sprout and they even make rooting hormone which you could mix into the water to speed up the process but that's not something we're going to do today so next we're going to get this out of this pot and we're going to trim up the roots and get the soil out of them so i'm going to start by loosening up the roots a little bit just like you're getting a seed plug out and then just turning on its side and pulling out you can see those roots go straight to the bottom there and this won't quite fit into the pot that we're transplanting into so i am going to trim up the roots but i'm going to start by just loosening them the goal is to just get all of this soil out of the root system and end up with a bear stem and a bare root ball i'm just using my fingers to sort of dig up into here so now for all the stubborn soil that is still in there we're going to use our hose you start at the top yeah just using cool water and just the spray function on your hose try not to be too hard on it but this this setting for us center seems to work well [Music] and the reason this is necessary is a lot of bugs will lay their eggs inside the soil fungus gnats live underneath the soil so you really need to just replace the entire soil ecosystem when you're bringing a plant indoors i'm just going to take care of this really long roots i know this isn't going to fit into our pots so you just need to trim the roots to the size of the pot you're going to be transplanting into let's see how long those are so it's worth mentioning that not every plant is going to survive this process it is very traumatic and you just have to accept that there's a possibility that your plant isn't going to make it but it's better to do this than to not because pests will just ravage your indoor space because they don't have their natural predators to take care of them as they do outdoors so here we are the plant is pretty much where we want it there are some large particles from the soil that are remaining in there they're just kind of stubborn and stuck and for that we're just going to use a very diluted solution of neem oil and castile soap so for any remaining eggs or pests this solution should take care of them i'm just going to let that sit there for a few minutes you could also use a spray bottle for this and spritz down the plant in its entirety after you bring it indoors and you can continue to do that every few days after you bring the plant indoors just to make sure any remaining pests are taken care of just making sure the whole thing is covered here and we're over wintering a few plants this year so that's why we have this bucket set up just makes it a lot easier to submerge all the roots okay so with that our plant is ready to go indoors and into the pot that we've prepared for it so let's head back inside okay so now we're going to transplant this into the pot as you can see the root system is just going to fit pretty nicely into this pot you may have a little bit of excess and we're just going to kind of set the plant where we want it to be where the stem is maybe an inch below the surface and then we're going to start filling with soil and sort of poking the soil into the root system with our fingers gently to make sure that all of the empty space is filled up now another note on soil if you can find soil that was kept and stored indoors instead of outdoors try to get that if you can outdoor soil can have those pests that we keep talking about especially if the soil bags have holes in them many of them do so you might not be able to avoid it but do your best to find a nice clean fresh soil okay so even up the soil pack it down and there you go now this is ready to go into a cool location with some ambient light the plant does still need light we'll talk more about this in just a bit be vigilant about pests like we said you can spray down with neem oil solution on a regular basis and just be checking for pests and over the course of the next several months while your plant is indoors over wintering it may try to grow some leaves and you should probably prune those back because that's where the pests are going to be feeding from if they are around closer to the springtime when the plants are going to go back outside you can let those start to regrow because that's ultimately the goal so now we'll give this a light drink of water just to fill in those empty soil spaces in the root system and set it in its new home okay so now let's move on to some common questions regarding over wintering the first one is what is the ideal container size to overwinter your peppers in and we chose a smaller pot size this is maybe a half gallon or so it's pretty small it's much smaller than the pot the plant was in and that's because we just want to keep the plant dormant we're not going to try to produce peppers while this plant is indoors the benefit of downsizing is basically a smaller footprint wherever you're going to be storing the plant there's really no need to keep a large bushy plant in a large pot of soil indoors when you're over wintering with that said a larger pot will allow the plant to maintain a larger root system and so you might end up with a better head start when the plant goes back outdoors but for us the benefit of a smaller footprint really outweighs that of a larger root ball so we do something like this you could do anywhere between a half gallon all the way to two or three gallons with that said you could go a lot larger if you plan to grow peppers indoors this is especially useful again this is just growing peppers 101 the larger the pot the more soil space and nutrients the plant can use to produce foliage and to produce fruits so that brings me to the next question which is can i get fruits while my peppers are indoors and of course the answer is yes you can grow peppers indoors year round if you want but you will need artificial light like i said we have an article all about the best grow lights for peppers on peppergeek.com i'll leave a link over here and in the description below if you're interested it's really fun it's a great way to keep your passion for peppers alive over the winter we do it every year again avoiding pests is your number one concern you really want to clean the soil and start fresh because you don't want to be dealing with an aphid infestation in your grow tent we also have an article all about growing peppers indoors and all of the nuances that come along with growing peppers inside rather than outside so read that article as well at pepper geek if you'd like more info if your goal is to grow peppers indoors from your outdoor plants cut back much less of the foliage you don't really need to remove as many of the fruits you can leave some of the unripe pods and hope that they ripen for you the transition indoors of course will be a change for the plant so don't be surprised if some of the flowers or the pods fall off after it's moved inside so that's sort of another question that we got how much should i prune back the plants well we showed you how we do it but you can prune as much or as little as you want but you should try to keep the amount of plant above commensurate with the amount of roots that are in your pot for keeping the plant in a dormant state it really doesn't need to be that big you can cut back a majority of the branches and the foliage so now moving on to the environmental conditions while the plant is overwintering let's start with temperature you want to keep it relatively cool if you can shoot for 55 to 60 degrees fahrenheit that's very cold for peppers they're not going to grow very much in that temperature range you're definitely not going to get any fruits but that's really the goal again you're just trying to keep the plant alive in a dormant state where it doesn't need much maintenance it's okay if it's a little bit warmer your plant might need a little bit more water in a warmer condition but make sure you don't go too cold because the plant can start to stress next let's talk about watering in those lower temperatures peppers really aren't going to use much water the frequency of watering may vary based on humidity but you really shouldn't need to water much more than once every week or two next up is fertilizer how much do i need to feed my peppers over the winter and the answer is basically none if you're getting fresh soil that has some nutrient content in it that should be plenty for the plant to make it through the winter if you're planning to actually grow peppers of course the plants will need some fertilizer so that's a different situation but if you're just keeping the plant dormant in a cold environment you really shouldn't need to fertilize it all now let's talk about lighting in a dormant state peppers really don't need much light but they do need some if you have a window that gets some ambient light that should be plenty for the plants throughout the day or if you're growing in the basement where you don't have any natural light you can turn on your grow lights just for a few hours a day some people have said that they give as little as two or three hours of light per day with their grow lights but we're going to be using natural light we don't have to worry about grow lights at all and lastly let's talk about reintroducing the plants to the outdoors in the spring how do you go about this process well basically it works exactly like hardening off we have a whole video about hardening off our peppers and we basically just throw these into the mix with our seed started pepper plants but the basic rule of thumb is to get your plants outdoors when the weather starts to warm up it's in the mid 60s low 70s fahrenheit and gradually transition them outdoors increasing the light exposure every day you don't just want to stick them out into full sun as soon as it's warm because they will get sun scald and they may burn and they'll be stressed out so you need to transition them slowly just like fresh young pepper plants but they should bounce back and grow more quickly from there okay i hope you enjoyed this video about overwintering let us know in the comments what plants you plan to overwinter this year don't forget to check out geeky greenhouse and subscribe to us over there for more gardening content and we'll see you next time you

Channel: Pepper Geek

Views: 629,983

Keywords: overwintering peppers, growing peppers indoors, indoor gardening

Id: 3wo3bwp5uQA

Length: 16min 55sec (1015 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 26 2021