Overwintered Harvest Monday

Tops and tails of parsley root

Once again, thanks to the previous owners, I got a harvest today of parsley root. It seems that a number of things thought it a tasty treat too but there was enough to share so I plan on cooking it up for dinner tonight accompanied by a side of parsley leaf salad.

Also our first bottle of maple syrup. The harvests are coming in at last!


Doesn't that pinch of hard work always make things taste fabulous? Actually it was quite zen watching the evaporators for a day in the woods while sugaring.

Harvest Monday - Winter heatwith overwintered peppers

I have written a tonne on overwintering peppers, so I won't bore you with a recap but here is the latest on my current hot pepper darling.


Scotch bonnet saved from grocery store seed. This is its second winter in the house.

You can see the last year's large, lush leaves are drooping and will probably drop though I am getting a new crop of leaves budding. I harvested most of the rest of the peppers today to pickle and dry.


Yummy but a bit much for one meal - this calls for preserving measures.

Aphids are plaguing this plant as they did last year but this year, I have some volunteers keeping their population down.


Rural properties have a lot of (lady)bugs apparently. Not that I'm complaining.

Overwintering peppersThe Interview

Fruiting Scotch Bonnet hot pepper started from seed, saved out of a grocery store pepper, two years ago.

***Curtains open***

I am delighted to see that you have so fully recovered from what must have been a difficult winter.

"The aphids were bad. Sometimes I didn't think I'd make it."

You and me both. I didn't think the occasional soap lather and random aphid squishing was going to be sufficient to lower their populations.

"Sometimes it felt like you were giving up on me."

Oh, you mean sticking you in the north facing window? I had to quarantine you from the other peppers. And there was that time that I transplanted that ladybug onto your stem.

"The cat ate it."

Well, you were a sorry sight but I never did the dreaded pot dump.

"Please, I can't even think of it."

Instead I refreshed your soil with a bit of compost.

"Sometimes you didn't water me for more than a week."

I was trying to dehydrate the aphids...


"Sure."



Aphid ridden pepper.

Well, that's all water under the bridge now. Look at you, flush with gorgeous green leaves and ripening fruit. All that in 4 hours of sun. I'm impressed.

"The other hot peppers are in full sun."

I didn't want to burn your shade grown leaves. Besides, I was curious about how well you would perform and this way. It will be less of a shock when I bring you in for the winter.

"You're keeping me?"

Are you kidding? Look at you.

"So you only keep the good looking ones."

You are a plant. An experiment at that. How would I know that a grocery store bought Scotch Bonnet would produce such a wonderful specimen, tolerant to shade, drought and aphid pressure.

"I don't want to answer."

My point is just Thank you. I'll be enjoying the fruits of your labour and saving more seed.

"At least my children will live on."

This year you will have the honour of sitting in the south facing window. You earned it.

"Those other peppers are a bit spotty. I think I'll stick to my quarantine."

You know, you're right. Maybe it's time I do some thinning.

***Scene***


That's a large watering can for scale.


Read more on Overwintering Hot Peppers or skim the quicky version below:

1. Put in pot of enriched soil at the end of summer and reverse harden off - soften off?
2. Clean off any aphids or other bugs
3. Take in before first frost.
4. Keep in a sunny window and water only when needed.
5. Control soft bodied pests with a diluted soap solution. Or squish
6. They will often die back as days shorten but should recover as days lengthen
7. Repot or replant after last frost.
8. Repeat.

Aphid Massacre - overwintering peppers

Still alive and over the dark hill of December, rolling down into the sunshine of spring:


Scotch bonnet pepper, first year being overwintered. It got attacked by aphids and the cat likes to sit in the pot which explains the sticky fur on its larger leaves. Also notice the new shoots sprouting out of the stem.

I write a lot about overwintering peppers here, but in the meantime, let me introduce you to the method's biggest foe for me: the aphid. My approach to their eradication is three prong. The first two are in the shape of my index finger and thumb squishing them as carefully but thoroughly as I can without damaging the baby leaves. No, I don't find it particularly yucky. Pop, squish, squish... You can wear gloves if you like. The other prong is that when I water, which is infrequently, I put in a bit of liquid soap and coat the leaves. About half an hour later, I wash them off. This is easiest to do in the shower at night so the leaves are dry by the time they see sun again in the morning.


If you look closely, you can see the aphid I am just about to squish, along with many others sucking away on the leaves and stems.

This three prong approach seems to work fairly well for me as I have yet to lose a pepper because of aphid or spider mite infestation. In the summer, the pests are quickly brought under control by beneficials. Only one of my peppers had aphids this year so it is relegated to the basement where it is receiving very sparse sun from a north facing window.

Proof is in the picture - this plant is getting cool, indirect light. The jalapeno beside it did not survive but I understand they are not as amiable to overwintering.

Now, I know I am implying that overwintering peppers is fun and easy (it is) but I have only tried with smaller fruited varieties of both hot and sweet so have no idea what it would be like to try overwintering bell peppers. An interesting alternative is to try to overwinter cuttings instead of the whole plants. Something I would like to try next year.

***

Hot pepper loves talk pests on Gardenweb

Wow, these Gardenweb pepper enthusiasts do some cool propagation tricks. Check out the air layering into plastic beer cups half way down this thread.

Happy green & red holiday

For all of us caught up in the festivities: Happy holidays. Let your bellies be full of food, your heart full of family and friends and your life light.


Here is my four year old 'long red cayenne' Capsicum Annuum. It does very well in its cramped pot. Right now, it is covered in flowers and has produced several crops indoors. The peppers dry very easily, even on the plant such as last year's crop that you can partially see. It's proved an excellent plant for me. Forgive the flashed overexposure as this was a holiday pic taken after dinner and before putting some excited little girls to bed.

Overwintering peppers has proved quite fruitful for me and I hope to encourage you to dig up some of your favourites to get a jump start on the next growing season. This seems to work best on smaller fruited varieties, like habaneros - Capsicum chinense - but as you see I have good luck with hot C. annuum as well.

For more, see The Chile Man

Pick a Pint of Peppers

I had decided not to start tomatoes, eggplants or peppers this year but despite my best intentions, people kindly shared seed, and I saved seed, and well I really wanted this or that variety so I ended up starting a near full house of plants including the above three varieties.

(Scroll down for how to save pepper seeds)

For those of you gracious enough to share seed, a selection of your babies:


Black Hungarian from Southwest Ontario:



I was intrigued by this variety but had never tried it before. The plant is very ornamental and productive even in our less than ideal weather as of late. I am looking forward to tasting them.


D'eschellette (my ink ran... Michel what was that pepper called again?... How plant names get altered.) from MidEastern Ontario



Since I took this picture, mere days again, these peppers have really beefed out.


Banana Pepper from somewhere... I can't remember exactly where... (why you should keep better records than me.)




Mini Chocolate Bell saved from my garden



I did not isolate these plants from the others they were snuggle-close with so I don't know if there has been any crossing or not. However, they do have strange pointy bits on their flesh which I'm not sure is a change in the genes or some sort of pest damage. The peppers look undamaged just bumpy.


Scotch Bonnet Habenero from grocery store



Thanks box store, and anonymous growers, for these. They are just about to flower so I'm not expecting fruit to ripen outside or even this year but I overwinter my peppers so hopefully next year I can taste them. Beside it is the re-rooted variegated fish that I saved from The Museum of Agriculture's demonstration gardens (it was on the ground, I swear). I'll have to wait until next year to get fruit from that too.


4 year old peppers plants confined to small pots:



Long Red Cayenne, on the left, producing strong and Fatali taking a break this year after fruiting indoors.

***

Saving Pepper Seeds


This is easy. Find yourself ripe peppers, scrape out the seeds, let them dry for a good week, spread out on a flat surface with good air circulation, not touching anything, and then label and put away in a cool, dry place like other seeds.

I like to dry mine on paper towels as they suck up moisture. They also tend to stick to the seed but a bit of dry towel on my seed hasn't yet been a problem for germination.


Okay, that's the way I do it but there are some caveats.

Caveat 1: Peppers are generally self-pollinating (they fertilize themselves) but if you are growing more than one variety, especially in the same species (same latin name), it's possible they might cross. Sources vary on how common this is (see Chileman link below for lots of detail)

Caveat 2: If you are saving from a hybrid pepper, then the result is anyone's guess but heck, if you have the room, it might be fun to experiment.

Caveat 3: I'm assuming peppers carry seed born diseases. Chileman recommends discarding any deformed, damaged or spotty seeds. You can treat seeds with 'hot water' before planting them. I have never tried this but it sounds like something you would want to do just before sowing them. As a general rule, don't save seed from plants with serious disease and warn the person you are sharing seed with of any potential problems. Destroy any deformed or suspicious seedlings or plants while growing too.

***

Chileman gives you more details on saving hot pepper seeds
Treating seed with hot water or chlorine from the Ohio State University

Hello little guys

My baby plants are growing. I've started some dwarf tomatoes to try as windowsill - patio - windowsill plants. As many of you may know, tomatoes are perennials. I am not sure how long lived our cultivated (and wild) varieties are but I intend to find out.


Little leek babies - first portrait.

I've also started some really cool looking leeks called Saint Victors, from another generous Homegrown Goodness guy who was getting some seeds from the Long Island Seed Project (LISP). May I recommend a browse of their seed selections if you are interesting in plant breeding. What is really neat about this leek is that they have selected to improve its tendancy to turn bright purple in the fall.

My hot peppers that I pre-sprouted* are started to root and the Pasilla, Fish, Small decorative pointed (collected this one at a park - ssshhh, don't tell - so I'm not sure what it was - I promise I only picked up some from the ground, really), and Jalapenos are now potted up.

Speaking of peppers, my overwintered peppers are picking up. Here is the Long Red Cayenne which in early January I figured was a goner because I thought I saw spots on it. Turns out that it overcame whatever was the problem after being exiled to the laundry room for a week.


Long red cayenne in its third overwinter. Happy birthday - you're four!

How are your plants overwintering? Started any yet?

Extra! Extra!

* Pre-sprouting or chitting: This refers to starting your plants out of the soil. People often green-sprout or chit potatoes. It is a useful technique for seeds that are hard to germinate too, either because they are hard to keep evenly moist during germination or because they require a lot of heat or some other reason. It is also a good way to check the germination rate of old seeds.

How I pre-sprout is that I moisten a paper towel, not dripping, put seeds on it and then fold it carefully and place in a labelled plastic bag. I place the plastic bags in a warm place and check daily. This is by no means the only technqiue and I Wet My Plants uses the more resilant coffee filter. As I'm writing this, I'm wondering if you could also use something re-usable like soft tightly woven cloth? I'll have to give it a try. One potential problem are the roots growing into the weave which occasionally happens when you forget to check daily. Then with the paper towel, you can carefully pull it apart to extract the trapped seedling. If a bit of paper towel remains, it's not generally a problem as it breaks down in the soil.

Overwintering hot peppers - so far so good

I thought instead of rattling on about the latest garden subject I was heavily googling (right now I'm looking decorative and tasty members of the rumex and chenopodium genus - look up Rhubarb Pie or Saucy Sorrel, darn pretty), I thought I'd let you know how my garden was doing.

Mostly, it's buried in snow. The two pepper plants that I am overwintering are doing well with descent leaf coverage as you can see on this 3 year old Fatali despite the low light levels. Now that we've passed through winter solastice, they should start to leaf out even more.


3 year old Fatali Habanero

I've even got ripening fruit on my 3 year old Long Cayenne.


3 year old Long Red Cayenne

It's the time of year that I normally repot these plants.

Overwintering peppers from this blog
Overwintering peppers from my old blog Ottawa Hortiphilia.
Some other guy at Hot Pepper Seeds gives you the dirt on overwintering peppers.

Overwintering Peppers - 3 year old Fatali and friends

Fatali Habanero Pepper

Every once in a while, you learn a gardening trick that sticks in your brain like stubborn pine resin and this was one of them: Pepper plants are perennial; you can bring them inside and produce a crop from the same plant next year. As I have a tendency toward adventure gardening, I thought, "cool" so I did just that. The first year, my pepper lost all of its leaves and looked so dead that I threw it out. Further reading suggested that leaf loss was not uncommon so I tried again. The second winter was a fantastic success yeilding a crop of long cayenne even indoors. The third year I was plagued by insects and this year will be the fourth year that I try it.


I particularly like this method for hot peppers because though I love spicy food, I don't need an overwhelming mass of hot peppers at any one time and I find that this method provides me with two crops of the shorter season Long Red Cayenne instead of one bumper crop. For the longer season Fatali habanero, I get one crop ripening near first frost in September. In fact, it was the pathetic growth of what was previously known as 'four leaf fatali' that promted me to try again. It hadn't fruited at the end of the season and as my husband had picked it out, I thought I would try growing it a second season.


Other then the jalapenos that were devasted this year by a mystery malady (I was away much of the summer), I had thought I had all the hot peppers I needed until I took a stroll in the Canadian Agricultural Museum, aka the Experimental Farm (more on this garden soon). What did I see but a demonstration patch of varigated Fish peppers and some Medusa Head? (or small pepper plants that stick straight up in multiple hues of orange and red - all identifications are welcome). Some animal had rampaged through the patch leaving several pods strewn across my path. What could I do but rescue them? So next year, I intend on adding Fish, Fatali, and maybe Medusa Head to the party wintering over.


***

Gardening 201 - How to Overwinter Peppers


Pot to Pot


This is the easiest method, plant seedlings in a large pot and repot in something larger when needed. You might want to add compost tea every once in awhile as well. Bring out for the summer, bring in for the winter. The only problem with this method is that you have to remember to water well. I have had branches die back - even the whole top of the plant - from what I assume is drought. My solution this year was to mulch. The plants only received rain water so it seems to have worked. This year was however a bit of a soaker.


Pot to Garden Bed to Pot


I have done this as well and the plants grew much larger bearing heavier yields. Of course they were much more disturbed when about a month before first frost near the end of September, I dug them up. I have read that you should trim the roots and tops at this point but I have never done this.


Problems and Observations


Before bringing in your plant, observe very closely for whitefly, aphid, spider mites and the like. They are difficult to combat inside so do so outside while you can. If you do get an infestation in the middle of winter, you can try applying a light soap to water spray, rinsing off after 10 minutes or so. You can also just try jetting the plant with water to dislodge at least some of the interlopers. I would do this when I watered them about once a week. I also used the squish method of pest control by examining my leaves very regularly and manually smushing the pests. This kept them under control enough to keep them alive until natural predators cleaned them off in the spring outside.


Peppers are very frost tenders so you can start introducing them to real sunlight as opposed to that filtered window stuff as soon as daytime temperatures are warmish. For me, that's 10 degrees celcius. I usually have them in a covered coldframe. Increase the amount of time spent out each day in increments or if you are me, forget they are outside and start swearing when you see them in the evening looked bestraggled. Once danger of frost has passed, you can abandon them in pots in a warm, sunny place or plant them in the ground.


From my short time overwintering, I have noticed that my pepper plants will grow and crop well then show decreasing leaf size and then the leaf size will gradually increase and they will grow and crop well again. I haven't grown enough peppers to say that this is always the case but it has been for me in the two pepper varieties that I have inside.


So now you know, go ahead and try it. As for me, I'm going to try overwintering minature sweet bells next year too in order to see how they do. There is a rumour that the smaller fruited species overwinter more successfully.

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Links

Most of the links are to my older gardening blog - Ottawa Hortiphilia which talks on length of my overwintering peppers saga.