overwintering 2011 Overwinter Experiment

geeme

geeme

My general motto has been that God knows what he's doing, let him take care of things. Especially when it comes to growing plants - grow them outdoors, and they're pretty successful. Grow them indoors, and I usually manage to kill them. Well, either me or my son's cat - I'll let you decide which is worse!

A couple of months ago I brought my three pepper plants indoors to let the pods finish up. I also started several sprigs of basil from cuttings. Of the basil cuttings, the first was successful. Others rooted, but then bit the dust as they had apparently been exposed to the black gook that hit this area in the fall, and quickly died. The peppers did nicely for a while, then the cayenne in particular managed to get a nasty case of aphids. You may have seen my post about the ladybug experiment - I must have had lazy ladybugs, because they definitely did not eliminate the aphids. Next thing I knew, I had massive quantities of aphids again. Then the next thing I knew, spider mites moved in. Hence, THE EXPERIMENT.

The nature of THE EXPERIMENT is your basic overwintering - remove the plants from the pots, give them a significant pruning and repot in fresh pots and dirt, then hope for the best. Only, because the aphids and mites were so bad, I gave the plants a SIGNIFICANT pruning, as you can see from the pictures below. I'm thinking maybe, just maybe, if I post this publicly, I'll be even more motivated to try to keep these alive over the winter.... we'll see.

The first to get cut down was the cayenne, because that's the plant the aphids liked the most. I had it isolated from the jalapenos, so although they did not get the aphid infestation, they got the spider mite infestation. They got chopped about a week later. Here's the results so far, the cayenne being after maybe 2-1/2 weeks, the jalapenos after just 1-1/2 weeks.

Jalapeno 1 - Can't deny it, I have no idea which jalapeno is which. One of these is a TAM, the other simply labeled "jalapeno", so not a TAM. My son stuck the tags in the dirt - neither of us can tell you right now which is which, so I'm going with peno1 and peno2. This is peno1 at about 1 week after being chopped. Right now it has no new leaves, but the stem is still green, so there's hope.
peno120110105.JPG


Jalapeno 2 - Not sure if you can see it well, but on the left there is a tiny leaf which has just sprouted - yeah!
peno220110105.JPG


Cayenne - Well, I don't think this one is still alive, but I haven't entirely given up yet. Is there any green in there? Maybe...... but no new leaves have started, and it's been chopped the longest.
cayenne20110105.JPG


The basil? Well, as I was taking it to the kitchen a week and a half ago, I managed to drop the entire thing onto the floor, with the pot flipping upside down in the process. Dirt went everywhere, and the poor stem got bent up. It looks like it's recovering, though, so I may still have a plant when it warms up, if I don't otherwise kill it in the process. This was started from a clipping from which I stripped all but a few leaves, so I'm pleased with its progress so far.
basil20110105.JPG


Wish us well!
 
you must have been having a bad hair day, in the past, when ever i hacked my plants that far down, they always died. jaly 2 looks like it could survive, as it has that small growth at one of the nodes. I have many plants that I won't cut because i can't find the node. the spot where new growth starts. i will usually leave a plant alone until i see the node with new growth and when i do, then and only then will i crop back.

get out the mister bottle with epsom salts and chamomile tea. also, put 1 aspirin into 1 quart bottle of water and give it a feed. When I cut my plants, I also close the wound either with tape or wax to prevent drying out. but since those are jalepeno and are a dime a dozen, not to worry.

basil is an annual, so it doesn't matter, but if it was parsley then I would weigh in.
 
huh aphids and spider mites and a damned cat... lol sounds like your having a blast with your plant care, yep, I got hit with aphids, got rid of them with overkill on bu spray repellent thing in the dirt, spider mites, I had gotten rid of them by removing every single leaf on my infected plants, one plant was generally still small and I have hope in it that in it, but the cat? huh haven't had to deal with that, course I don't got a cat so good thing? haha

your cayenne e looks of it I kind of have doubt it will pull back, but hey, it seems as iff there is still green in it so it should pull out of it! :D best of luck for your plants, and you should make this like a grow log thing about your overwintred plant a :D well I think it'd be pretty cool.
 
Darn aphids- they're soo annoying. In the summer of 2009, I grew a couple Jalapeño plants and a habanero plant. All got some aphids, but not a whole lot. The worst critter that got me that year was dear. My habanero plants were doing nicely, then dear came in and ate the leaves off!

Hope all your plants come back - peno2 looks very promising with that leaf sprout. The Cayenne looks questionable to me too. Nice looking Basil!
 
Burning Colon said:
basil is an annual, so it doesn't matter, but if it was parsley then I would weigh in.
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From what I've read, basil are much like peppers - an annual where the temps get too cold, perennial otherwise. My original plan was to dig up the basil plants, and pot them for the winter, but as already mentioned, the black gook got to them before I could do that. Very, very aggravating, as I was hoping to dry a ton of it, and ended up with maybe a tablespoon of powder - just the very first test batch.

Thank you to the well-wishers - I need it!

G
 
G'luck! I just brought in most of the rest of mine, too. Had the first hard freeze and it melted most of them. Unfortunately, my two other plants I had already started the process on were back outside because it was REALLY nice the two days before the freeze. They're back inside, but I think it was too much for them.

All the others are putting out new growth already.

We'll see if I can make it another 9-10 weeks, but I think signs are promising...
 
I miss living in Houston - 9-10 weeks would be wonderful. We've probably got closer to 15 weeks before I can put plants outside more than a day or two here and there, and at that will probably have to cart them in and out a few weeks more after that. Best wishes on your overwintering progress!

G
 
geeme said:
I miss living in Houston - 9-10 weeks would be wonderful. We've probably got closer to 15 weeks before I can put plants outside more than a day or two here and there, and at that will probably have to cart them in and out a few weeks more after that. Best wishes on your overwintering progress!

G
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Now there something you don't hear every day!

Good luck to you as well. I am definitely lucky that my indoor period will be relatively short.

I'm thinking about putting my overwinters in the ground this year. The deer won't be able to completely kill these plants...just 'trim' them.
 
I posted about this somewhere else but more is better. Organocide. 100% organic, Sesame oil, Soybean and fish oil, and can spray it every 3 or so days if necessary. Aphids die an agonizing and painfull death, plants love it. My overwintering and hydro Peppers are getting a weekly dose, after a few 3 day runs. You can spray it indoors, but they recommend the premade deodorized version. Otherwise it does smell fishy.

http://www.organiclabs.com/organic_labs_home_lawn_garden_organocide_product.htm

http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1vZ1xge/R-100607913/h_d2/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053
 
It's now a mere 4 days later. Jalapeño 1 has the tiniest beginning of new growth at one of its nodules - looks like it's going to make it. Jalapeño 2 now has 7 obvious leaves coming out of 2 nodules, and a third nodule has 2 more leaves just starting. The Cayenne? Well..... let's just say that if any leaves pop out at this point, I'll be very surprised, but I'm not ditching it just quite yet. Pretty much everyone says that overwintering annuums is difficult, so if I manage to keep 2 out of the 3 going, I guess I'll be doing pretty well for a first-timer.

The basil still seems to be in recovery mode - the stem appears to be a little bit straighter. I have to say I really love the smell and taste of this variety of basil - if you can find it, I recommend growing it.
 
It's now ten days after the first pics, and here's an update.

Jalapeño 1 - Still very green, but only an almost-microscopic show of new growth:
peno120110115.jpg


Jalapeño 2 - This one is clearly happy:
peno220110115.jpg


Cayenne - Yeah, I really think this is dead:
cayenne20110115.jpg


And last but not least, the Basil - still coming along:
basil20110115.jpg
 
That's a happy pic of the Jalepeno, it looks like it wants to make lots of poppers. I've got three I'm trying for the winter we'll see
 
You're doing very well.

I've never had all of my overwintered plants survive and your percentages look excellent so far.

Keep up the fine work. :)
 
Best wishes to both of us then! I am still scratching my head over jap1 - why is it still so green, but nada yet? But also still wondering which is which, and of course, won't have an answer to that until the first pod comes out. Are the three you're trying to OW all jalapeños, or something else?

As an additional note, I've begun to collect snow, let it melt, then use it to water the plants. Seems to be a better approach than tap water.
 
Good job G! Cat used my 2 overwintered plants as litter boxes and ate my starts :eek:

That is what I get for working 18 hr days with all the snow/ice and cold weather :crazy:
 
Alphaeon said:
Good job G! Cat used my 2 overwintered plants as litter boxes and ate my starts :eek:

That is what I get for working 18 hr days with all the snow/ice and cold weather :crazy:
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Nah. That's what you get for owning cats.

I once heard a study that second-hand smoke reduces the lives of house cats in smoking households by 40%. I immediately took up smoking.

Plants are lookin' good! Except for the Cayenne. But hey, your percentages are looking nice.

I'll snap some shots of my indoor 'crew' sometime soon. My Onza Roja and my Chocolate Hab are rockin' it. The others are alive but not thriving.
 
Alphaeon said:
Good job G! Cat used my 2 overwintered plants as litter boxes and ate my starts :eek:

That is what I get for working 18 hr days with all the snow/ice and cold weather :crazy:
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Yeah, my son's cat used one batch of seedlings for a litter box, another she ate, and another she just played with - came home from work to find Jiffy pellets ALL over the house, and the starts torn from most of them. Crazy thing was where the boxes with the starts were - she had to do some serious gymnastics to get to them, but apparently she was a nimble creature. She's older now, a little less spry, but she still surprises us from time to time, so I'm not really ready to risk starting things from seeds again, just yet. Oh, and she managed to do each of those in much less than 18 hours.... bless her heart.....
 
geeme said:
Percentages when there are only 4 plants are a little skewed.... but I'll take them! :lol:
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Well, you're running about a 75% success rate so far.

I have 21 living at the moment, most doing fine except for one that only has green stems like your peno and about 5 that died or were discarded, so roughly the same percentage. ;)
 
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