Day one of the last official workweekend of the season was very successful. I am sure we thanked those of you that came and worked so fervently, personally, but I want to reiterate how great it is to see, work and chat with you about what you’re growing and how you’re doing it. It’s so helpful to me (and certainly for other gardeners) to get another person’s perspective about these things.
Steve (left) is a reasonably new gardener to the garden and he was taking home these beautiful flowers to overwinter and I realized while talking with him and a couple other people that some of you may not know about some things that can be overwintered indoors.
Steve and I moved our overwintering discussion to pepper plants and found that we both are experimenting with different varieties (and I hope to trade with him in the spring!); meanwhile, Edie had some peppers that were putting out new greens and we agreed she should try to overwinter them.
Peppers, in our region, are considered an annual, but they are a perennial in warmer climates. Ty will “die back” indoors, but as long as the stems are still green, they will survive so long as they don’t experience hard freezes.
Edie has a warm basement, so she is going to overwinter hers there. Steve and I are following a windowsill route, which is what I did last year with a pepper called a “peter pepper” for which I can no longer find seeds.
Because peppers take a long time to start from seed and are also reasonably slow growers, a good way to get sturdy plants is to overwinter them. Here are my little peppers that I started from seed this year and am overwintering on the sills. In discussion with Steve, I think his are about the same size.
And here are some of the peppers I pulled up from the garden a few weeks ago.
I am by no means an expert on these kinds of things and this is why I love our community gatherings so much: I learn more every time I talk with you guys! But what I really want to know is your experiments: What have you overwintered? Was it successful and how did you do it?
You may leave comments below, or if you want to write a blog about it, I’ll set you up.