It's been done before, but you need the right conditions. You could keep them going in a heated greenhouse, but that's a lot of investment when you could just start from seed. i wouldn't bother unless I had one very special plant I wanted to multiply up.

I do have a heated greenhouse, but it is only 8 by 14, so limited in the plants I can winter. My number one is tomatos, but also peppers, cucs, and this year I am trying sweetpotatos for leafy greens all winter. We'll see how that works out.

Because I was given pepper plants, I do not have the seeds. If I end up liking some of them, I would like to make cuttings to transplant outside in the spring. Any idea the best way to handle pepper cuttings?

In the search bar, type in overwintering peppers and read the third one down. It should tell you all you need. Its about hot peppers, but it works for sweet peppers as well. You may be a little skeptical at first, but their method works. I just pruned my peppers a few weeks ago to where they had no leaves at all, and trimmed the root ball to about the size of a tennis ball, and theyre doing way better than I thought they would. This is my first time doing it, so I may have done it too early, or used too small a container, but I know it works. With a green house you may get to keep all your plants. Anyway, check it out, lots of good questions and answers.

{{gwi:111475}}

Thanks, Reddog - I'm heading over there right now. But I have to tell you, I woke up this morning to the realization that if I have peppers on these plants, I will have seeds. That goes to show a real weakness in my gardening efforts - saving seeds instead of paying good money out each year to buy more. Its time to work on that.

Yes.

Go to the hot pepper forum and the experts will tell you all you need to know.

Kevin

another_buffalo,
Keep in mind that seeds from a hybrid plant-as many peppers are-do not produce fruits true to that of the parent. If you are successful in rooting parts of the producing plant, the fruit should be identical to what you originally had.

Well, I am changing my stragedy on peppers after reddog's advice. I am still trying to root the one plant. But i have some beautiful bell peppers who just barely survived the heat and drought, but now have bounced back wonderfully. I'll going to pull them and try to bare root them.

My friend who gave me the pepper plants said that if I left them outside as long as possible to set fruit, I could probably have peppers through Christmas from them. That is tempting, but looking at the possibility of getting such a dramatic head start to next year's peppers has real appeal. So I will split the difference, half and half. Nothing like learning something new......

Yup, overwintering your favorite peppers is the way to go for me. I like cutting mine back into bonchi (bonsai chile) so that I have an attractive house plant during the winter, and then can set them back out in the ground after the frost danger has passed and have a mature plant while everything else is barely sprouted.

A how to guide to getting started on bonchi.