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overwintering Overwintering - Dead, or just pining for the fjords?

Wulf

Wulf

I understand that some plants will shut down over winter, but should they ever dry out enough to snap instead of bend?

My habs and scorps are clinging to their leaves with varying degrees of success, but they're at least green and springy. My serranos and purples are just dry sticks. I've destroyed one ornamental purple just to see how far down it had dried out, and there was no spring left in any of it.

Do they come back from that, or does dry = dead?
 
Dry = DEAD. If it is brown stems and not green, they will not recover. I lost one of the 4 I brought in, it dropped all leaves and the stems became sticks.
 
Wulf,

I had a plant, that had not been water or taken care of for a few months,it look dead to me, but i put in the corner, starting adding water, and withing 3-4 weeks I saw new growth comming out and crew it for a few months and got aton of pods off it. So they will come back. That is my exp at least.

This was 2-3 years ago, so The plant was nto green, and look like dry sticks, but maybe it was not 100% dead and thats why it came back.

Can always put one near a sunny window or undera light and watch and see what happens
 
Thanks for the input.

I think I'll keep one serrano as a test plant and toss the others that are in that condition. The one serrano was the star of my summer growing season, so it deserves whatever small chance it has.

Photosynthesis is entirely in the leaves, right? Shining a light on a stick isn't going to give it any benefit if there's no green on it? Do you guys still fertilize in the winter? I haven't given any ferts since I brought them in.

Also, I bought a grow light a while back but haven't gotten around to setting it up. I really need to get on that, but it seems my motivation went away with the sun and warmth. On the plus side, if I set it up in the basement I can tell people to bring a sweater when they go down, because it's... chili... down there.
 
Wulf said:
Thanks for the input.

I think I'll keep one serrano as a test plant and toss the others that are in that condition. The one serrano was the star of my summer growing season, so it deserves whatever small chance it has.

Photosynthesis is entirely in the leaves, right? Shining a light on a stick isn't going to give it any benefit if there's no green on it? Do you guys still fertilize in the winter? I haven't given any ferts since I brought them in.

Also, I bought a grow light a while back but haven't gotten around to setting it up. I really need to get on that, but it seems my motivation went away with the sun and warmth. On the plus side, if I set it up in the basement I can tell people to bring a sweater when they go down, because it's... chili... down there.
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Not 100% sure on, i live in a climate where we really dont get a winter at times, It may dip in the 40'sF at night, but typically we in the mid 50's for the low,and 60-70's for the high, even the 80's at times.

Yes, photosysthesis is primary in the leaves, with little to non in the stems. But if you have light near buy never hurts to ahve it close, just for when it does get that first little growth. As for fertlizering, I would think it would need some to keep getting the food it needs, YOu may be able to cut back to half strength, but I am not 100% sure.

LIke i said, your plants, mine look like it was dead, but it grew, I do recall now that when i try to bend a branch, it did bend, a little, and didnt snap right in half. And the stalks and stuff were a tanish color.
 
Joshuap2000 said:
LIke i said, your plants, mine look like it was dead, but it grew, I do recall now that when i try to bend a branch, it did bend, a little, and didnt snap right in half. And the stalks and stuff were a tanish color.
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If I push on a smaller branch, it'll snap right off. I don't even have to hold it with another finger, just pushing with one finger will snap it off. And it's been getting water this whole time, so there was no other stress to force it to hibernate, just the much-reduced sunlight. Oh, and there was also an outbreak of aphids due to my lax quarantine procedures when bringing in some other plants. The aphids are gone now, but I can assume they didn't do any good for the plants in their weakened conditions.

It's really the lack of bend in the plants that's making me think they're dead. I was expecting some of them to shut down over the winter, but being dry enough to snap takes it farther than I was expecting.
 
Cut a small piece off the end of the branch, If thge center of the stem is still green then your probably in good shape. The foliage will appear from the lower nodes first. Sometimes it can take over a month for the plant to show. I've got a 4 yr OW that's solid wood the first Foot up with green stems beyond. The (dead) bark is producing foliage at the nodes but none up top (hasn't happened yet). The key to the root pruning is to leave enogh of the feeder roots. Some folks may hack to much and can actually loose one side of the plant......seriously...
 
I overwintered a couple plants two years ago and cut them down to almost stumps, with just 4-5 growth nodes (I don't go that far any more, but it's do-able.) They went dormant, and two started to come back, but the other looked dead. I continued to water, and it eventually did come back. Last year, though, I overwintered 10 plants. Cut them back a tad, but not to stumps. Two died - dead that no amount of watering would make a diff. So it could go either way. I kept my overwinters in a sunny window, even when they were just sticks. Don't know if that made a diff or not, but they certainly seemed to like it when the leaves started coming back in.
 
you may wish to put a tent around the plants; clear baggie or something to keep the moisture/humidity levels around the stem. even though the soil may be moist our furnace/heating systems and winter just sucks the moisture out of everything.

i have a small humidifier that runs during the day to keep the humidity levels up, even though there is a humidifier on the furnace it is questionable as to how much humidity actually gets to different levels of the house.

another idea is to put the plants into totes and then cover the tote with painter's drop sheet that you can get at any hardware store or dollar store for $2. so you would be making a terrarium - why i have even cut the bottoms off 2L plastic soda bottles and put them over my plants, keep the lid on and just breath into the top and seal it up, the carbon dioxide with nourish the plant assuming it gets some sun light. last year i put my pequins in a small aquarium with a light, today i am still nibbling on pequins.

i have a datil i am trying to save and a couple others that are just sticks having lost all their leaves, this happens every year to some plants, some come back, some don't.

good luck during this winter.......... i would say go Jets.........but where would they go!
 
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