Overwintering veggies inside

Hey friends! Got some really good pepper, and tomato varieties that I want to plant out next year. I currently have them in pots in my house. That’s really the best I could do right now. I can already tell they’re not big fans of forced air heating and cooling systems. If anyone has any tips on overwintering in this manner please let me know. Thank you!

I can't think where but I know someone has mentioned this somewhere. Just had a look and can't see it. Also about taking cuttings from tomatoes. watching with interest.

Thanks Mandy. I should have mentioned that these were plants from cuttings. I am looking for exact clones for next year.

I was thinking that there was a recent discussion related to your topic.

If all you want to do is keep them alive until spring that might work.

I bring in my lemon balm that is in a hanging basket every year. Well, last year I had a gout attack and could not walk for a week.  Poor thing died because no one watered it.

If I remember that discussion correctly there was something said about not enough light indoors.

I am going to invest in some daylight bulbs for a corner of the kitchen so I can start seedlings off indoors. Maybe that would be your answer.

Lights are not a bad idea. They are smaller and more reasonable than they used to be.

Is there a cool unheated room in your house? I've had luck bringing plants (chillis, sweet peppers, citrus) plants inside (so its warmer than outdoors), but keeping them somewhere as cool as possible so they go dormant- they require less light this way and don't try to grow and go leggy, but survive long enough for spring to come and me to put them back outside in the greenhouse.

Great idea Chris. I’m going to definitely try that!

Just an update. Only herbs and gotu kola did well. Everything else got dried out with the forced air heating system and died. I’m hoping to have a dedicated room with a humidifier next fall to overwinter plants in.

Hate that you lost your peppers! I tried to overwinter some pepper plants this winter, as well, and had similar results with the ones in the house. They did okay until the central heat was coming on more consistently; then they dried out and appear dead, except for two bell pepper plants (of course the ones I didn't really care about surviving are the only ones still living). Usually I can convince them to go dormant, but I used to put them under a table in the greenhouse instead of keeping them inside.
It seems that they really dry out quickly inside. If you can convince them to go dormant by gradually reducing light & temps during the fall they do much better in my experience.

Hello all! I started this thread a year ago and still looking for answers. This year I have a large variety of pepper plants that I’d like to overwinter.
Having this discussion with my dad yielded some insights into how his mom did it. She had an unheated porch that was wrapped in plastic all winter. She would pot the plants and wrap them in plastic as well. He said she grew the same peppers year after year. Interestingly after reading a bunch on this subject it sounds like she did everything wrong 😂😂😂! We live in NC zone 7 and it gets cold occasionally. More so then than now which makes this more of a puzzle.
I have a south facing, completely open porch. I’ve thought about trying the same and only bringing them in on the coldest nights. I also have a completely north facing porch that gets no direct sun.
If our home wasn’t full of family I would try making them dormant in a cool spot. That won’t be happening this year unfortunately.
I would love suggestions or old family how-to stories that I may have missed. Thanks guys.

Just have to say that you've inspired me to try this myself, so thanks! I am going to pot my peppers and celery, and take some tomato cuttings this fall and see what happens.

i’ve overwintered pepper plants as bonsais a few times, and it tends to work well. pretty severe root pruning to get in-ground-grown plants into reasonable sized pots, and then pretty severe pruning of branches to match. i do have to put them under lights since i don’t get very good sun in any of my windows. they green back up pretty quick and i usually start getting new blooming mid-winter. they do need to be manually pollinated indoors. when it’s safe to put them back out, they need to be hardened off again, but then they can go in the ground and can really take off.

edited to add: keeping them mostly dormant can work too, but it sounds like it would be pretty hard to pull off with your situation.

Tomatoes do work Jen but I had a difficult time. They got leggy hanging out in a north facing window. I had to make new cuttings twice before I could plant out this spring. So the ones I planted were third generation cuttings from the fall cuttings I took inside. If you have a favorite variety it is worth the work though.

Hi Greg.  I started my tomatoes from seed indoors last year.  They got really leggy and fell over repeatedly which damaged their stems.  Some of the stems ended up breaking completely when we planted them and didn't survive.  So I know exactly what you mean about tomatoes getting leggy and that being a problem.  I watched a great you tube video on overwintering tomatoes from cuttings this morning and I think the ideas in that video may well work.  The guy who made the video put the tomatoes in good sized pots once they rooted, staked them and attached strings from the ceiling to their tops to hold them up.  Then, as they got suckers, he would cut off and root the suckers.  His oldest tomato was like 3 feet tall and skinny as a result of his method. In the spring when he planted them, he planted any long stems a good foot sideways in the ground. Amazingly, he even had fruit from some of them during the winter!

If you aren’t trying to get fruit during the winter, you could take cuttings from the cuttings several times.  Smaller size, takes less space and less light. i think this should work for tomatoes. I am not sure how hard it is to root pepper cuttings, but I think they would probably be easy.

I have indoor tomatoes blooming. They are from cuttings off tomatoes that I planted last January. They produced inside, then I moved them outside for the summer.

Scott, how did it go this past winter? I also tried to overwinter peppers this winter, but failed to water sufficiently, so they died. The problem with an out of the way place in the house is that sometimes one forgets about what is there.

At zone 7, you might, juuuust might be able to trim them back and overwinter under a cloche. Maybe have a second one to go over the first if there’s a severe cold snap. You could put a big black rock or two in there for thermal mass. There’s also something that’s marketed for tomatoes that’s similar….I can’t remember the name, but they are water-filled bladders of some sort.

D

When I have overwintered outdoor plants, I've had the best luck with giving everything a soapy bath when they first come in (to prevent transporting pests) and frequently giving them showers in the bathtub. (If your bathroom is south facing you could keep them in there all the time, it's nice and humid.)

I managed to over winter 4 pepper plants and a cherry pear tomato. We have an attached greenhouse, unheated. It's not great, but just by having plants in there it stopped the roof from leaking in there. I'm pretty sure it's magic. I planted the jalapenos this past growing season. They did great. The fancy datil peppers I got 1 repotted and it leafed out like crazy. It's full of immature peppers in the greenhouse now. The other datil I got repotted just maybe a month ago, it's alive (more magic involved, bc it should be dead or maybe peppers like neglect more?). They are in the greenhouse again :)

As for the cherry tomato, i had been trying to let it die lol I had grown this whole packet of old seed 7-8yrs old and open. Every dang seed came up! I sold a couple, then gave away maybe half. Then left the rest out to die (I had ..5 planted in the ground already). This one didn't, so why not give it a bigger space than the 3inch pot it was in see if it would survive over winter? It did. It didn't get crazy leggy. The greenhouse doesn't have lights for growing. The little fruits it had did get to eating size and instead of being a yellow pear like all the others it was red! What a surprise lol so I took cuttings from it and grew some of those this year.

I took a cutting from the Roma type I grew this year. I'll see how that goes. If it matters or not, I tended to only water them when they look droopy and only enough to perk'em back up. Most of the leaves of the peppers will fall off too.

Daniel Ackerman wrote:....There’s also something that’s marketed for tomatoes that’s similar….I can’t remember the name, but they are water-filled bladders of some sort.

D

We found some of those while cleaning out the coop and figured we might as well try'em out. I'd not recommend. At least our experience with them wasn't good. I used them on the tomotillas. They got leggy and just weren't happy. Didn't get a single fruit off them. They are awkward to fill and I wouldn't trust them to stand up on their own either. We used the little tomato cages to keep them from smashing the plants down.

I overwinter quite a few veggies indoor this year.

Cherry tomato, sweet potato and water spinach all grow easily from cuttings.

I also dug up two big bell pepper plants and repotted them. I trimmed one down to a few short stems and let it go dormant. I trimmed the other one a bit to be 2 ft wide and tall and put the pot on a cart. I wheeled the plant by two sunny windows to get maximum sunlight. So far it keeps on flowering and growing peppers. After trying my own bell peppers, I can't go back to those huge but flavorless ones in grocery stores anymore! It's worth all the hassle to get a jump start next spring.

May Lotito wrote:I overwinter quite a few veggies indoor this year.

Cherry tomato, sweet potato and water spinach all grow easily from cuttings.

I also dug up two big bell pepper plants and repotted them. I trimmed one down to a few short stems and let it go dormant. I trimmed the other one a bit to be 2 ft wide and tall and put the pot on a cart. I wheeled the plant by two sunny windows to get maximum sunlight. So far it keeps on flowering and growing peppers. After trying my own bell peppers, I can't go back to those huge but flavorless ones in grocery stores anymore! It's worth all the hassle to get a jump start next spring.

Heck yeah. I'm figuring out that's the only way I'm going to get peppers in this strange mountain valley. Are you hand pollinating then or got you some bumblebees around yet?

S Ydok wrote:

Heck yeah. I'm figuring out that's the only way I'm going to get peppers in this strange mountain valley. Are you hand pollinating then or got you some bumblebees around yet?

I hand pollinated the flowers. I kept 2-3 fruits to ripen and thinned the rest of flower buds. I also grew one pepper plant from cutting and plan on air laying a few more. It takes so long to get a bell pepper to produce from seed.