I overwinter jalapenos. I live in a very warm climate, so I’ll just cover them if I know it will dip below freezing. Worked last year and I’ll try again this winter.
this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2024
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My chili pequin planted in the ground comes back each year in 8a, but it's native here.
I'm trying this year. My pepper plants didn't sprout until July and didn't mature enough to produce anything (thank you cold, cloudy, rainy UK summer!) so I'm going to keep them indoors near a window, and hopefully they'll have enough time to produce next year.
My aunt is a big gardener in 7a (piedmont NC) and has overwintered jalapenos a few times and declared it not worth it for her, apparently the yields aren't much/any bigger than new seedlings and it's a nontrivial amount of work and space to keep them overwintered. If you try again and have different results I'd love to hear about it!
I overwintered some peppers once by just bringing the plant inside and throwing it under a grow light. So not really doing the "prune and make it go dormant" approach that seems popular.
I did accidentally do that once when a frost killed all my leaves/soft stems, and I just put the pot into my basement expecting to plant something else the next spring. When I put it outside the next spring, new growth came off the dead-looking woody sticks.
I did it one year with jalapeños and will likely never do it again. The yield on them was actually less than the freshly planted. I think the winter just over-stressed the plant and it never fully recovered. Zone 8a.