Easy Steps to Overwinter Chilli Pepper Plants
Easy steps on how to overwinter your chilli and capsicum plants to have mature plants and bigger harvests for next season. If you have grown chillies, peppers or capsicums over the summer months, you may be able to overwinter them to keep for the next season. Around this time of year, in Autumn, you will notice your chilli and capsicum plants start to die off, lose their leaves or stop producing full-sized fruit. Chilli or peppers are warm-loving plants and do not like the cooler days of autumn and winter. It is around this time that aphids and other bugs will arrive and attack your plants when they are in a vulnerable state. Rather than ripping them out and starting again next season, you can prepare to overwinter your plants.
What does “Overwintering” Mean?
“Overwintering” is a term used when you prepare your plants to keep them alive/ semi-dormant through winter, and then they will be able to be planted out during the warmer spring months. Some plants are classed as annuals because they die off in cool weather, and then you need to replant them in Spring and Summer. But if you overwinter them and keep them somewhere warm, you will be able to convert them into perennials and grow more food without spending any extra money next season.
Why do you Overwinter Chilli Plants?
There are some great benefits to overwintering your plants. They already have an established root system, and this means the plant will be able to start back up again when the conditions are right and will produce quicker and in more abundance than a new young plant. This means your second-year chilli or capsicum harvests will often be earlier and much more fruitful! Which is definitely something we want!
How to Overwinter Chilli Pepper plants?
There are a few ways to overwinter your chilli and capsicum, and most of it comes down to how cold your climate is. Here in Perth, we get very little frost so I leave my plants where they are over winter. If you live in a colder climate where you get dramatic drops in temperature and frosts, then you will want to pot up your chilli and bring them into a warm spot in your patio, greenhouse or inside. I grow mine in my pallet planters, which, in winter, I move so they receive sun nearly all day. They are also in a sheltered spot close to the house and fence, so they seem to do well overwintering in situ.
The two chilli plants I have in this planter have been here for 2 or 3 seasons and produced so many chillies this summer!
To prepare them for winter:
1. Prune Your Plants
I cut the plants back to around 50% or about 20 cm high. This can seem brutal, but it means the plant has fewer branches to feed and can concentrate its energy on staying alive. Make your cuts at “major intersections”. This is where multiple stems shoot out from one node.
2. Keep Them Frost Free
If you live in a colder climate that gets frosts, then carefully dig your plants out of the garden and plant them in a pot. Keep your potted chilli plant somewhere warm and sunny until the last frost has passed in Spring before planting them back out.
How to Prepare Overwintered Chilli Plants for Spring?
Once spring arrives and there are no more frosty days, plant the potted Chilli plants back into a warm, full sun location. Give the plants a good feed of organic seaweed fertiliser and they will shoot off lots of new growth. It won’t take long until they will have new growth and will start producing flowers and fruit.
If you have any questions on how to overwinter chilli pepper plants, leave me a comment below 🙂
Happy Gardening,
Holly 🌿
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