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overwintering Hillbilly winter shelter

DWB

DWB

It's attached to the south side of our pumphouse. It doesn't get morning sun because of a huge old eastern red cedar but beginning about 10 AM and throughout the day it gets pretty good direct sun that will get better as the oaks and pecans finish dropping their leaves
This one's a little better than what I used keep perennial habañeros going for years (until I forgot to turn on a light on the wrong night). But still, except for the lath strips and a box of T25 screws for the lath, it's built out of garbage, miscellaneous shop supplies and recycled crap. I built it so I can remove four screws and haul it off to the barn after the winter.
 

 
I have two TS cardi and two carolina reapers in there. I started whacking off branches after pod picking a couple months ago so they would fit. By mid-winter I expect to have them trimmed down to the 4 forks.
 

 
It's "high-tech" :-) I got me a $15 data logger to learn how much heat and external insulation I'll need to keep these plants alive and decide if I want to bother with keeping them warm enough so they continue producing . Temp ranges so far are 46.2 to 80.8 with an overall average of 65.7. Low outside temp since I  put the plants inside the shelter two weeks ago was around 37.
 
Once I get the plants cut back some more  I'll slip some foil backed foam insulation against the already inner insulated wall of the pump house and throw more black stuff and thermal garbage on the floor. I also have some of those cheap mylar thermal blankets I want to try as roll-ups on the outside under my regular blanket covers.
 

 
Since I'm not really interested in keeping the plants producing all winter, it shouldn't be too expensive to keep them alive. If we have our normal lows in the  20's and I get them cut back far enough to cover them at night with an inside thermal blanket, about a nickel a night for the nights when heat is needed should do it. I have two more scorpions I'll probably stuff in there  after things are cut back a ways. Right now those are parked in front of a south-facing window in our 5th wheel and still producing very well.
 
If we have some seriously cold weather come in this year (below 10) , I have a 250W IR  "french fry" light and 500W halogen worklights I can use.  I also have a thermostatic 1500W electric heater but that's kinda overkill. Regardless, I'll probably test it out anyway.
 
Assuming they make it, I'll re-pot in the spring and these plants should quickly turn into bushy little beatches that will give me a bunch of pods right quick next year.
 
The shelter is working well. Since we were supposed to get two nights of hard freeze on the weekend, I made a roll-up removable plastic sheet/thermal blanket cover and used 4 x 40 watt incandescent bulbs.

It got down to the high 20's for 5-6 hours Friday night. The lowest temp I recorded in the shelter was 50 and it went below 51 for a total of 2 hours. It wasn't as cold Saturday night so it never went below 53.

Until I get them all pruned down to the stubs,  it looks like this is about all I have to do to protect them from freeze even if it gets down to the low teens. I'm thinking it won't be much of a stretch to keep them and the roots above 50. When it gets really cold I'll substitute the 250 watt IR for one of the 40 watt bulbs and see what happens.

The plants seem happy so far. All the main stems I whacked off before putting them inside are sprouting a lot of new growth.
 
 
As the pods ripen I'm cutting back the branches and now have the room to get that other piece of insulation on the back wall.
 
Soil temps in the pots are holding at 68°
 
The little data logger is very nice. It stores 32,000 points. I have it set to take a reading every 15 minutes so I've used 1618 points so far. It will be a while before it requires a reset. Average temp is down to 63.6. We had a good bit of bright sun yesterday for change so the inside temp went up to  90 for an hour. Cool gizmo for $15.
 
 
I got all the plants trimmed back so I can cover them with a thermal blanket when it's cold and I'm running the 4 x 40W incandescents for heat.
 
We got down to 24° F last night, cold enough to make an inch of ice in everything holding water. The coldest temp the plants felt was 53° at 9 AM. At 1 PM the outside air temp is up to 38° and the sun is out. The plants are soaking it up and happy at 78° inside their little house.
 
 
 
 
 
Where did you get that data logging thermometer? I want several!
 
 
 
DWB said:
As the pods ripen I'm cutting back the branches and now have the room to get that other piece of insulation on the back wall.
 
Soil temps in the pots are holding at 68°
 
The little data logger is very nice. It stores 32,000 points. I have it set to take a reading every 15 minutes so I've used 1618 points so far. It will be a while before it requires a reset. Average temp is down to 63.6. We had a good bit of bright sun yesterday for change so the inside temp went up to  90 for an hour. Cool gizmo for $15.
 
Click to expand...
 
Ah, never mind - I just used this thing called "Google".
 
http://www.elitechus.com/temperature_logger/Elitech_USB_Temperature_Data_logger_URC_5_147.html
 
I bought it on ebay. $14.95 delivered. I checked and see he's raised the price to $14.97 but still has some. Seller hillfly3389.
 
Last night it got down to 21° and stayed below freezing for more than 12 hours. Last night I was able to rug the roof and blanket wrap the walls since it was clear sky with no rain/freezing rain/sleet etc like Friday night. The lowest temp my plants felt was 59.9° recorded at 10 AM.
 
The winter shelter/old folks home is now sharing space with second stage nursery babies as they make room inside the house for new starts. Six more young'ns will be moving out here as soon as they're transplanted into the gallon pots.
 
I was planning to add only 9 randyp plants to my collection of 6 older plants for this year but that JUR-Z-Devil sent me some of his devilpods so I'ma gonna have to start another batch of babies and grow some of his stuff.
 
There are two more TS cardi overwinter plants in the shelter now. too. I was experimenting with keeping them in another place but I whacked them off and moved them in here a few weeks ago.
 
 
Here's how my overwinters and my randyp December babies turned out. In this picture I have five of the overwinters, all happily repotted. I have another overwinter that had some really weird roots so I just stuck it back into the same pot. That one will probably be a write off but it's hanging in there.
 
My nine randyp babies turned into ten. One of the 7 Pot Douglah came up as a double stem so I whacked one off and made a clone. I only have two babies moved to upgraded pots so far. I'm a lazyman.
 
My big mama scorpion plant has three fully orange pods already so I'll be tasting my first fresh peppers of the year before too long.
 
 
It's finally supposed to get cold (mid-20's) this weekend so it was time to do the final pick, the hack back, downsize the pots and stuff the old folks into the winter shelter. I forgot to count but there's probably 16 in there.
 
lEBWBKR.jpg
 
willard3 said:
The Photobucket watermark is very distracting on your fotos.
Click to expand...
 
Yea, PB has been screwin' with subscribers since 2017, first requiring 400 bucks to use their hosting service and if you didn't pay-up the pic was replaced with a PB notice instead of the pic. This year they allowed the pic to display but with the watermark you noted unless you subscribed, albeit at a much lower rate. I was working on moving my pix to IMGUR and now I have to pay to access my account to do anything.
 
I noticed you use FLICKR . Is it the free service and not pro as I noticed your posted pix have a "Ysda-yada-JPG by Willard (your last name), on Flickr" but no watermark on the pic?
 
Flicker gives you 1000pics free if I recall, something like that. $$ for unlimited, for me they want $65 , when I signed up it was $55 last year, canceled it so the 6000 pics I have up their will be blocked except the allowable limit this December.
Imgur Charging ?? Im not.
 
dragonsfire said:
Flicker gives you 1000pics free if I recall, something like that. $$ for unlimited, for me they want $65 , when I signed up it was $55 last year, canceled it so the 6000 pics I have up their will be blocked except the allowable limit this December.
Imgur Charging ?? Im not.
Click to expand...
 
IMGUR is free but I'm not jumping up and down over their album format.
 
What does "I'm not." mean?
 
Im not being charged, sounded like you were being charged.
The pics are out of order sometimes so you have to edit to make sure their in line when uploading I found, thats annoying (imgur).
 
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