Bringing In This Year's Peppers for the Winter

• Choose the hardiest and healthiest plants. 

• Thoroughly prune your pepper plants that you have chosen to bring in. Remove all or most of the leaves, especially the larger leaves. Prune down aggressively, leaving a few of the nodes to reduce your pepper plant to a simple Y-shape stem. 

Hard pruning will prevent pests from coming inside. Pruning will encourage the plants to push out new growth. Overwintering without aggressive pruning will stress your plants.

• Re-pot the peppers, removing the soil and pruning some of the roots.  Give them a quick dip in a weak solution of soap and water ( ½ tablespoon of neem oil into a gallon of water), immediately rinse off, and plant in new soil (I usually add a couple of tablespoons of organic granular fertilizer to the soil).

• Be careful not to over-water. With the days being short in the winter, peppers still need water, but not as much as the summer.

Overwintering pepper plants indoors will keep your plants for the following season, but because of the lack or intensity of the correct lighting, they will probably not produce. If you have the correct lighting, you can get production, but it takes extra money and a lot of time to produce that $40 pepper. It is fun to do though!

The next step...Cloning Peppers

• The peppers I brought in were hybrids, so I couldn’t use the seeds. I decided to clone them once they flushed with new growth. This also takes a long time, so I used a rooting powder and a seed heat mat. These tools should help speed up the rooting process. You can either use rooting gel or powder. I have heard from experts that gel is better than powder, but is a lot more expensive for the results you get.

•  I have read that when you choose your cuttings from the stock plant, you should choose the new growth. Other people say to cut the stem with a little wood attached. I decided to use a little of both and probably have good luck both ways.

 My cuttings I chose were between 2-3 inches. I made sure to cut off all the flower buds and most of the leaves, especially the large leaves. I dipped the cut ends in the rooting powder and planted them. I used a coco plug using a hydroponic type contraption, but a seed starting mix kept wet will also work. 

•  I have my setup in a bright room with a LED light bulb on a timer- set for on 12 hours and off 12 hours. I have a seed starting mat underneath, and a tall dome on top to hold in the humidity. In the picture you can see that I am sharing the heat and light with my sweet potato starts which is a lot of fun to try.

• After a few weeks the cuttings will start to root out. After 4-6 weeks they should have enough roots that I can transplant them into bigger pots using a good potting soil. I will then start to use 1-2-2 balance of water-soluble fertilizer at half strength. By this time, you can treat the plugs like seedlings.

Starting peppers from seed takes an extra-long time.  I usually start my pepper seeds in January or February. You can try harvesting seeds from the fruit they produced in last year's garden.

Taking cuttings and rooting them is fun and sometimes a good way to save money (or spend extra money). You can do it in water or soil. I have found that this way works well for peppers. It is the way that some commercial growers grow theirs. 

If you want to start cloning plants, some of the easiest are tomatoes and a lot of your houseplants. Have fun with this on a cold winter day in January or February. 

 I would love to have others share their cloning experiences!