I kept this real hot pepper indoor for 2 years now and it remained productive with hand pollinated with a small paint brush. Fresh supply of hot pepper through out the year.
Tony
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Pequin?
Hot red Thai pepper 2 different varieties in one pot.
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my 2nd guess…
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Nice. Can’t beat your own peppers. I got 3 seasons from mine. Someone gave me in a 3g and said it was at least a year overwintered maybe more. It started putting smaller peppers and less so culled it. I did upgrade the container and soil mix but now I wonder if should have root pruned it instead to see if it came back stronger.
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I trimmed the roots a little bit in the Spring and a dumped the old Moisture control Maricle grow control mixed and added new one .
Tony
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I grew peppers inside. Peppers were likely one of the first plants I ever grew. I got them to grow and produce during winter too. I planted some Aji Cream in September and they were producing in February or March. My experience was when I failed is when I brought them outside. The peppers did not transplant well into the ground as the mature stage and in the pots they got hammered with aphids. I also looked the peppers up and there are ones you want to grow for cost reasons and ones that you should honestly just buy the fruit. Carolina Reaper sell for 7 dollars for like 5 so are worth growing but a lot of hot peppers and sweet peppers you can buy 1/2 pound or a pound online for under 10 dollars and shipping.
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@tonyOmahaz5
Well done!
I’ve noticed here that hot peppers have the greatest outdoor longevity of Solanum fruits, lasting several years. They generally go dormant and lignify in our 10b/11a winter but you’d never know it the following summer. I wish you many more years of production with your indoor chillis.
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wild bird peppers like chiltipine and pequin are much longer lived and woodier shrubs. Ive grown them but haven’t dug them to overwinter to date.
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I wonder how accurate that is because this website claims chilipin only goes to 100k SHU What Are Chiltepin Peppers - Spices Inc..
That being said it is stating in areas without a frost so you are looking at zone 10 and up. I think I read in areas like South America and the Caribbean the pepper is actually an invasive species. It makes sense because birds cannot taste the heat and each pepper has a bunch of seeds to be spread with peppers having high germination. There is a pepper than can handle temperatures down to zone 8 at 10 degrees but those peppers are hard to find. They go under the name cold chili pepper or wild capsicum Flexuosum. Again even those are only going down to 10-12 degrees. The problem is with peppers in a pot is peppers have a crazy root system. In a few months they filled my 14 inch pots. That is why you see a decline in vigor in a few years vs in the wild
Bulgarian Carrot is plenty hot for me, and has nice fruity overtones to go with it.
I like overwintering one called Orange Tree Habanero. It grows a long tree like stalk that becomes woody by the end of the year. They seem to like it here and fruit well. I got two indoors right now. I can’t give them much light inside so I prune off all fruit and don’t water very much. I leave them outside to the very last minute. Prune and bring them in. I should root prune too. The cold though does make them go dormant. I don’t want them to grow in the winter. It is hard to acclimate them but if you’re patient they will take off again in the spring.
Here is a photo of the plants first season. If you feed them and water you can get them to five feet or taller the first year.
This is one of the plants. Photo taken June 27 2023.
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Ive found other Solanaceous crops very amenable to being planted for the season and then dug up and wintered in pots. If that doesn’t root prune them, you did it wrong
Ive grown pequin and chiltipine. Theyre a little tougher than most other hot peppers IME. I wouldn’t be too concerned about hardiness zone. Unless youre in a place where they can be grown in ground all year, you effectively are giving them the “zone 10” treatment by moving them in before frost.
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Unless you are crossing different varieties you don’t need to do this. I bag flowers to ensure self pollination and pure seed, this works well even when grown indoors. I know of people who glue flowers shut before they open to ensure pure seed is produced.
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Great infos but I am crossing these two varieties to grow out some seedlings to get the hotness, flavor,and size of both parents.
Tony
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White bullet habanero from last season. Pruned the top 90% in the fall and it dug up and it is happy in a tiny pot. Has produced a few peppers for seed saving since growing back from the stump.
Pollinating would certainly produce more peppers but I am mainly looking to keep this alive and plant out in the spring.
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Nice Bonsai shape. Yep, hand pollinated will produce more peppers for sure because no winds or small pollinators indoor.
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That depends. If growing indoor peppers you need to hand pollinate as nothing else will pollinate indoors. As for outdoors that depends. I remember the first year I tried to grow peppers I grew tabasco peppers. Well the problem was the peppers did not get pollinated because they did not flower until September. Normally Septembers are fairly warm but that September we were seeing 30s every night and only slightly higher during the day. Pollinators like bees were not out as it was not hot enough at that point. If you are smart with growing peppers inside you can actually get peppers to fruit inside and not just outdoors. I prefer a toothbrush.
The pollen will fall off and the stamens surround the ovaries. It’s pretty hard to miss. Many times I have had peppers flower while I’m still acclimating them sometimes even before I do take them outside. I try and save seed from these fruits as they are the most likely to be true. I have had more than once where seeds didn’t come out true. So I started paying more attention to these early fruit. Plus get it over with and call it done.
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Can you just place a mini-fan in front of the indoor pepper so it can just self-pollinate without involvement of needing a paintbrush manual pollination.
I thought i remember reading wind pollinates more than insects for tomatoes n peppers.
And each flower i think i read can pollinate itself without even the need for another flower’s pollen from the same plant. So just needs a very light wind maybe
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