2015-2016 Winter Indoor Peppers

[applestar]

So how many years can you get these peppers to live?

I had the same question when I started out. You may find one or both of these discussion links interesting

Subject: Why Bring Pepper Plants Indoors for Winter?

Inserting the link to this discussion for sidebar reference here:
Subject: Perennial hot peppers - natural seasonal lifecycle?

Where hot peppers grow as perennials, what kind of natural seasonal transition do they go through? Do they drop leaves in fall and stay dormant and bare through the winter? How cold would it get? Or does it never get cold enough for them to deteriorate and do they stay green and productive throughout the year?

...I think the oldest pepper plant I have -- a jalapeño -- is going on its 4th winter. I'm starting to lose track, so I've started marking their containers and tags/labels with the year they were started from seed.

[applestar]

Update photo collage of Winter Wonderland

- Bhut Jolokia (suspected to be crossed with something else according to someone who has grown them for a while -- she says these fruits are not wrinkled enough),
- Yatsufusa from last year's Pepper Seed giveaway, and
- Hanoi Market which was grown from seeds from some fruits shared by pepperhead212 (Thanks! )
- you can see some supervariegated Fish leaves and fruits mingled with HM
- Larger red fruits are from mislabeled plant and has not been ID'd but are tasty, thick walled and sweet.

The tomatoes are Whippersnapper x Faelan's First Snow F2.

[applestar]

Not Bonda ma Jacques -- I have two fruits left on the plant. (One downside of Winter Peppers is it takes them a long time to ripen, advantage of Winter Peppers is that they last a long time on the plant and is better "stored" that way until ready to harvest)

Yesterday, when I was pruning down the overwintered peppers in the sweet pepper SIP's in the garage, I found these immature runty fruits on the right on the plant labeled Toli's Sweet . See the pointed blossom ends? Do you think that's what the mystery pepper might be? Is it likely for it to be only about 9 inches tall in an 8 inch diameter clay pot? I need to search for more info on Toli's Sweet.

[applestar]

Last major harvest -- Bhut Jolokia cross, Jalapeños, Tollis Sweet Italian (?), and Yatsufusa

New growths on some of the peppers overwintered in the house -- Trinidad Perfum, Dunkel Violetter, Szentesi Feher, Bolivian Rainbow

[applestar]

I harvested all of the remaining fruits from the one jalapeño plant on the kitchen window bench so I could trim it down. I was a little late doing this and had to cut off a fair number of flower buds and already opened blossoms. I'm not worried since it will quickly grow again, and will be able to grow into better shape for having had all the inward or straight upward growing as well as spindly growths pruned off. I think this plant is three years old? It's in a three gallon square pot.

Odd thing is most of them have this pointy bit on the blossom end, but it wasn't on the fruits harvested in the summer or earlier in the winter. I'm beginning wonder if this is a winter indoor garden thing. The point is delicate and rubs off easily just from handling. (there's a fruit lying on a broken off point -- 2nd one in the big cluster truss. Maybe these are pistils that normally get rubbed off fairly early in the fruits development, but due to indoor protected conditions, they have chance to stay on the fruits all the way to the end.

[applestar]

Here are two of the Maui Purple peppers that are coming back after being reduced to sticks by the TRM. So far so good

The Hari eggplant seedlings -- both in this ice cream tub and another group in yogurt cups -- are yellowing for some reason. I can't tell if I might be overwatering, if I'm not keeping them warm enough, or if they need fertilizer -- I've heard eggplants are heavy feeders. I tried adding organic 7-4-2 to the yogurt cup group yesterday, but if anyone knows what this is, please let me know. I have had limited success growing eggplants from seeds so far and I don't know why they grow sometimes and why they don't other times.

The sorry looking seedlings in the shallow tray above are salvia seedlings that got lost in the shuffle and got dried out. I do have another, much better looking group of seedlings

[applestar]

These Maui Purple are definitely coming back.

[pepperhead212]

I thought that Maui Purple of mine was gone for sure. The leaves turned about 3/4 brown, and many dropped, but a few weeks ago a bunch of new areas of new growth showed up! I figured that it had to be the increased light that triggered it.

[applestar]

Odd looking Hanoi Market (left) and Fish (right) -- I think mites are stunting the fruits

-- I picked them today because I want to give them a final haircut and prepare them for going outside (uppot/freshen potting mix and fertilize). Hopefully, the Garden Patrol will give them a good once over

[applestar]

Here's an example of what paper plants do after being overwintered. As you can see, this is a tiny plant in a 4 inch pot, no bigger than what you might grow from seed in spring, but look at what it's doing

When I uppot this or plant in its permanent location for the season, it will take off and immediately start blooming and setting fruits on multiple branches.

[applestar]

I was afraid to include eggplants in the topic title because I was afraid that would jinx them... But as it turned out, four of the overwintered eggplants seem to have survived.




I Uppotted them out of these ice cream containers into individual containers today. There were three in one container -- one of them with a white baby eggplant so presumably these are all White Comet. The other container had one plant left with flower that is lighter purple so maybe this is Diamond.

Both containers had worms in them. The two best growing, flowering plants each had a biggest worm in its roots. Gave the smaller plants their own big worms in the new containers.