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Slowrolling's outdoor overwinter 2011/2012 log

This is a log of my first attempt to overwinter anything, so should be interesting. Since I am in a fairly mild winter climate (high 30's low 40's av. dec/jan low) with usually only a handful of nights below freezing I decided to attempt to do an outdoor overwinter.

So far I have:
Built a few raised beds out of re purposed fence redwood. After that I placed one of the raised beds over/around my pre-existing in ground pepper plants. Then I shovelled in a bunch of dirt to fill the raised beds and aggressively pruned the foliage on my peppers to make them more compact and fit in a hoophouse with room to grow over the winter months. Then I built a cheap hoophouse using youtube guide using PVC, pipe straps, zip ties, 4 mil clear plastic, and some clamps.

Here are a few pics:
IMG_1544.JPG

IMG_1545.JPG

IMG_1543.JPG

IMG_1542.JPG


I've been sick the past week so had plenty of gatorade bottles to use a solar heat storage containers :)

You can see a bit of tip yellowing on some leaves that I assume is from the leaves not being used to that much sun, since they used to be leaves underneath the canopy until I hacked/pruned them way back. I put up a sun barrier for them the first day I pruned them but then they got full sun from day 2 on.
 
Click to expand...
slowrolling said:
This is a log of my first attempt to overwinter anything, so should be interesting. Since I am in a fairly mild winter climate (high 30's low 40's av. dec/jan low) with usually only a handful of nights below freezing I decided to attempt to do an outdoor overwinter.

So far I have:
Built a few raised beds out of re purposed fence redwood. After that I placed one of the raised beds over/around my pre-existing in ground pepper plants. Then I shovelled in a bunch of dirt to fill the raised beds and aggressively pruned the foliage on my peppers to make them more compact and fit in a hoophouse with room to grow over the winter months. Then I built a cheap hoophouse using youtube guide using PVC, pipe straps, zip ties, 4 mil clear plastic, and some clamps.

Here are a few pics:
IMG_1544.JPG

IMG_1545.JPG

IMG_1543.JPG

IMG_1542.JPG


I've been sick the past week so had plenty of gatorade bottles to use a solar heat storage containers :)

You can see a bit of tip yellowing on some leaves that I assume is from the leaves not being used to that much sun, since they used to be leaves underneath the canopy until I hacked/pruned them way back. I put up a sun barrier for them the first day I pruned them but then they got full sun from day 2 on.
Click to expand...

So long as your temps are good, this will be cool. Watch them temps!
 
Pepper-Guru said:
So long as your temps are good, this will be cool. Watch them temps!
Click to expand...


Figured that would be important, so I bought a wireless thermometer with 3 wireless probe base stations. One for ambient, one for the hoophouse and one for the future germination area.... just need one with email alerts next time ;)
 
Nice work on the hoop house,
Are those "San Marzano's" to the right,........ if so lucky you, that's an excellent tomato.

Greg
 
Looks great..being too lazy to build anything, I was thinking of crowding all my potted peppers in a pup tent with some sort of a heat lamp when the mercury is expected to dip.
There is a great motivation..It would be so nice to get two or five seasons ...!!!
Plus the seeds from the subsequent generations would be "localized". :woohoo:
 
Well so much for keeping this log up to date... taking care of my overwintering peppers went out the window unfortunately also. Life gets in the way sometimes.

so here's the cliff notes version of the overwintering attempt:

One of the hottest driest winters on record here and I wasn't able to open up my little hoophouse on some of those days, so the peppers endured several days probably more like weeks of 120+ degrees I'm sure.

I gave up on them and a particularly windy day ripped the plastic sheeting from one of the sides.

However much to my surprise when I went out to the garden for the first time in months this april, low and behold 3 out of 4 had survived. The Habanero was killed and the Fatalii is in very bad shape. Pics to follow soon.
 
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