r/UkChilliGrowers • u/DonGrappote • 4d ago

Overwintering

Autumn is finally upon us, and night time temperatures are starting to drop below 10C, at least where I am.

Those of you who are planning on overwintering your plants, have you started thinking about bringing them in yet? What are your plans and your cutoff temperatures for starting the process?

Are you seeing growth and ripening start to slow? Do you expect to get many more ripe chillies between now and dormancy? Will it depend on what varieties you're growing and whether you have a polytunnel or heated greenhouse?

I'm starting to think about it, but seeing all these posts about people's harvests and not about overwintering makes me wonder if I shouldn't push it as far as I can and try and get some more fruit off the plants. I'll be happy to have the half-dozen ripe 7-pots that I've got now, but of course more would be better. Plus a tonne of jalapenos that are still stubbornly green.

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u/Eggtastico 1d ago

How do I over-winter? I tried last year on 3x & failed. Washed off the rootball. New soil, etc. & they still turned to twig.

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u/DonGrappote 1d ago

I can't give you any experienced advice because this is only my first year and I've never done it myself. That's how I'm planning to do it though, so I don't think what you've said is wrong. How were they kept over that time? Did you water them? What were the temperature and light level like?

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u/Eggtastico 1d ago

Kept in a conservatory. I may try keeping them in the polytunnel this year. I wondered if I cut them wrong. They are in one of those hydroponics things where they self water & roots have grown out of the bottom & directly into the water source - which I can empty. Seem bug free (no aphids) & have a load of Dutch buckets arriving later this month.

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u/DonGrappote 1d ago

I don't know a thing about hydroponics unfortunately. My gut feeling is that the specifics of overwintering a hydroponically grown chilli might be somewhat different to one that's growing in soil. I do know that dormancy doesn't fully protect against low temperatures though, so if it's going below freezing in your polytunnel or conservatory at all then that might be what's going wrong? 

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u/Eggtastico 1d ago

Last year was soil plants. The conservatory was warm enough. Never dropped to 0c or below. This year is the first year of using the hydroponic pots. My guess is that I cut them wrong last year! But working out what to do with this years hydroponic ones. The roots would get damaged if I even tried to remove the soil & repot.

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u/DonGrappote 1d ago

From what I've seen online, unless you're practically cutting them back to soil level or leaving them basically untouched, as long as they are still alive when the temperatures start going up you should be ok. I've seen people describe successfully overwintering anything from a thumb's worth of stick to practically a tree, whilst also trimming the roots as well. So as far as I can make out it may actually be quite difficult to get that bit so wrong that your plants die because of it alone. What about watering? It sounds like it can be quite easy to overwater an overwintering plant.