Back in mid October I prepared my chilli plants for overwintering. I chose 9 plants in total; 2 varieties of habanero, 1 birds eye, 1 apache, 1 Bulgarian Carrot and 1 Super Chilli F1. They were all chopped back so that only about 5 inches of the stem remained and they were moved inside onto a south facing window sill in the living room.
Because I didn’t plant any seeds until March this year, some of the plants had only just started to fruit so taking them through the winter seemed like an ideal way to get the most out of the plants by letting them fruit into a second year.
In my last update in mid November the plants had burst back into life. Well i can report that they have continued to do so. In fact so much so that some of the plants are flowering again! It will be interesting to see if any of them produce any fruit. The main reason they have come back to life i am sure is because of the constant warm temperatures they now get on their sunny living room window sill.
At this stage i am unsure whether to leave them be or to cut them back again to try and help them conserve energy and go dormant for a month or two. What I am going to do is leave about half the plants as they are and re trim the remainder back to about 5 inches above the stem.
I’ll report back on the progress in another month or so. I’d be interested to hear about your success (or not) stories about over wintering chillies.