Perennial Peppers?

Peppers are usually considered to be annual plants, when grown in climates with cold winters. They go dormant at about +10C and die at 0C as far as I know. But the plants can survive much more than one season, and produce fruit continuously as long as conditions allow.

Has anyone experimented with this? Either in a mild climate, using a greenhouse, or taking them indoors?

My own experiment has had a mixed result. Last year, I took inside a single Jalapeño which had exceptionally good fruits, and transplanted it back outside this spring. The plant is very thick stemmed and vigorous compared to my newly grown peppers. The first batch of peppers was about 1-2 months earlier than my other plants, but the fruits were incredibly spicy. I'm now harvesting the second batch of the year, and the fruits are a bit meh in flavor and also extremely mild.

I could explain what I see as follows: the plant got a bit of a transplant shock in spring because I started fertilizing it too early (while still at the kitchen window), so it was already full of fruits when I put it outside. Stress increases spiciness. Then in the summer, I think I overcompensated and held back too much with the fertilizer. That's one possible explanation; the other is that the plant is just lower quality due to being in its second year.

I'm interested in this because my balcony really doesn't get that much light (only afternoons), and plants always take longer than other people say. My favorite peppers are various types of ají (capsicum baccatum species) that I learned to love in Chile. They seem to grow even slower than capsicum anuum. In my case, the ají is just flowering now, way late into summer, even though I started the seedling 4 weeks before last frost. My growing season is just too short! I'm guessing the only way for me to grow this species at all would be to give it a much bigger headstart with a fully mature plant. That's an experiment I can try next year.

Also, it just seems like a permie thing to do

I've kept pepper plants alive for several years by pruning them way back in the fall and keeping them under a florescent shop light all winter in a pot, and then replanting them in the spring. I pruned them back to basically just stubs with a few leaves, and use a 16/8 schedule for the light on a timer. They were plants from seeds I ordered from a guy in Australia (The Hippy Seed Company), and didn't want them to die because I couldn't find them here in the US. They got gigantic, the main stems were bigger than a quarter.

The cat finally got them and killed them. I built a little fence around them to keep Conway Kitty from eating them, and one day he crawled up in the ceiling and jumped down from above to munch them.

Good to know that this works for several years. I also cut the plant back to just the stem with a few leaf nodes. The stem itself does a little bit of photosynthesis, so technically you don't need *any* leaves.

I have kept peppers alive by bringing them inside and growing them under LEDs, sometimes for multiple years. If you give them nutrients and enough light, they'll give you fruit all winter. I haven't noticed the specific spike and ebb pattern of spiciness that you mentioned...I mean it does grow and shrink, but I don't think it's due to age, so your stress hypothesis sounds better to me.

I did that years ago when i was growing on a rooftop in Philly. Definitely doable.

I've done this a few times with both peppers and eggplants, potting them in the fall with a hard pruning, keeping them in a sunny window all winter, and then planting out again.  As I recall the first fruits the second season were several weeks to a month earlier than from new, seed-grown plants.  

I am in a warmer climate and they are all perennial albeit short-lived.

got 3 nice peppers all prepared for winter. 1 baccatum, 1 chinensis, 1 annuum.

Also growing some random stuff around them, in this case onion greens. I have so little space that bare patches of soil always end up with something in them.

Vitor Bosshard wrote:The first batch of peppers was about 1-2 months earlier than my other plants, but the fruits were incredibly spicy. I'm now harvesting the second batch of the year, and the fruits are a bit meh in flavor and also extremely mild.

I would diagnose this as a nutrient deficiency. Calcium and Potassium are the key to flavor in Peppers.

If a pepper is trimmed down to a few stems, does it still need sunlight and good soil?

I overwintered some trimmed peppers plants a few years ago in a cool dark place and they didn't thrive the next spring. I think maybe the dormant stage is too long (5 months) and they have been too exhausted. I am trying again this year. Weather permitting, I will keep it outdoors as much as possible to catch more sunlight. It has dozens of fruits maturing, but signs of nutrient deficiency are showing. Should I thin the fruits and let it get ready for less growth in winter months or fertilize it now to make it stronger? BTW, it will only get natural light by a west side window but I may invest in a bigger grow light.

I've been successful doing this averaging one plant out of 4.
The last time,aphids and mice attacked the plant indoors and it never thrived when put back outside.

I have friend who is growing peppers indoors over winter and then outdoors when it's warm.
He had aphids when he brought outdoors plants inside, so this year he air layered the plants he wanted to over winter.
By doing this he hopes to avoid all soil born pests and pathogens.

May Lotito wrote:If a pepper is trimmed down to a few stems, does it still need sunlight and good soil?

I overwintered some trimmed peppers plants a few years ago in a cool dark place and they didn't thrive the next spring. I think maybe the dormant stage is too long (5 months) and they have been too exhausted. I am trying again this year. Weather permitting, I will keep it outdoors as much as possible to catch more sunlight. It has dozens of fruits maturing, but signs of nutrient deficiency are showing. Should I thin the fruits and let it get ready for less growth in winter months or fertilize it now to make it stronger? BTW, it will only get natural light by a west side window but I may invest in a bigger grow light.

I don't have much experience (yet), but my feeling is that fertilizing your plants and triggering leaf growth while daily light is getting less and less just sets the plant up for failure. It will expend all its resources on leaves that don't provide a return for months to come. Trimming back the foliage and especially the flowers signals the plant to hunker down and save energy. This stored energy will provide vigor in the spring.

If you have to transplant, I think the plant will need good light for a while longer, so it can re-establish itself in the new soil. You want to send a healthy, happy plant into dormancy, not a stressed one. During dormancy, a low but steady amount of light should keep it alive.

This spring, I started fertilizing my pepper too early. It was a bit of a problem because the plant grew vigorously and started fruiting, but the light to support all that wasn't really there yet, so I ended up trimming it back and wasting some of that vigor. This time, I will try to go more with the flow of the seasons, and just give a bit of a boost to strengthen the effects that would have happened anyway. What do I mean by this? Plants only start reacting once they detect that it's sunny. They have a lot of "knowledge" about natural cycles encoded in their genes, but they don't have a brain capable of anticipating the immediate future. Their senses are restricted to reacting to things they're perceiving right now. But I, as the gardener, know a week in advance that the plant is going outside, to coincide with a nice weather forecast. I can fertilize it in anticipation, so it wakes up earlier and gains a headstart over what would have happened naturally.

In a tropical climate, peppers grow year-round without dormancy.
I’ve tried moving plants indoors during heavy rains and storms. found that the flavor can change with stress and lighting conditions.
Consistent watering and fertilizing might help.
Some midday shade protects plants from extreme heat, ensuring they produce peppers continuously.