I find that the chilies on older plants are not as good as the ones on newer plants, and so I am sure that people overwinter plants because the plants continue to produce chilies throughout the winter. Here is one of my Habanero plants from Feb 11 of this year:

The chilies are getting smaller, and they got even smaller later this year but kept producing through the spring and summer, always getting smaller. Then a couple of months ago, I got new plants growing inside this pot, and I plan to transplant the new plants and discard the old one. I think it is good to keep old plants as long as they are producing, until new ones take over. Maybe if I had put this plant in a larger pot, the outcome would have been different, but this is a fairly large pot already and larger pots would be that much more difficult to move.

Can't speak for everybody, but I usually get pods much earlier than with seeds planted in Janruary, and set out in late March as transplants here in Texas. I usually pot up extra seedlings in 2-3 gallon pots once they reach 1' tall in the spring. These stay in these small pots and produce like crazy, but stay under 3'. The foliage is cut back in the late fall and they go into the GH. They can be planted out much earlier than transplants as they are tougher. Got three Red Bhuts that are overwinters and are almost 6' tall and wide now. Got flowers and pods all over'm now. Had at least three pickings off of these so I've got bags and bags of dried bouts now.

i don't over winter as i think that is stupid (no offense) unless i were trying to grow big bell peppers which typically grow bigger on the second year, but i definitely wouldn't over winter for chilies.. i would just take a cutting or two and start a new plant which creates an identical genetic plant. i typically get bigger plant than the plant the cutting came from and they produces fruits way earlier. i've seen people hack up a plant to death, root ball and chop all the stems, but IMO this will never be as good as it if were a cutting.

Cuttings are good too. They still have to catch up with the mature plant. If you don't have a place, then that's the way to go...

I usually overwinter some plants but they are either 1 of a kind or something really hard to grow. Those that are good winter hardy plants I also keep. This year I have a bunch in 1 gallon containers that I will overwinter to start next year. I have chopped them up before to fit them in there but I noticed that those do not produce as well as a first year grow. So those that I would chop, I will just grow again from seeds.

I overwinter several. I am on the east end of Long Island and it is good to get a head start on the plants because spring weather here is pot luck. If I was in a warmer climate I would not do it. I do have a couple of plants I seeded myself and have become a nice size, call it emotional attachment maybe.

I guess my motives are more emotional as well. I am debating on overwintering this year. I haven't the past couple. But I have a six foot Orange Tree Hab that I was thinking about giving another year to.

Yes, emotional as well.

I've found that the over wintered plants put out many more peppers than the new ones. Your mileage may very.

John

Aside from some folks getting bigger plants, are cuttings easier than overwintering? Stevie; ever thought of overwintering a bell! Not my favorite.

I overwintered (cut back; no fruit here in No Cal) six plants for the first time last year, two unintentionally. The other four (all chinense; two seasoning peppers; aji dulce 1 and Grenada seasoning, two scotch bonnet) took forever to fruit and ripen their first season, perhaps because I bought them late, on sale. I have no control to compare them too, and I almost lost three to an irrigation mishap, but so far feel pretty good about this year's yield.

The unintentional one were a serrano, which resulted in tons (okay, dozens) allowed to ripen to red for hot sauce, and a piquillo, which is my new favorite, replacing ripe poblanos.

Those plants were all cut back from prior year?? I could save another couple of mine by doing that.

Here is a reason why I overwinter. My scorpion just went through a big growth spurt and is loaded with buds. It only put out about 25 pods this year, started from a seeding, and there are easily twice that in buds as of now. I am putting in the grow lights and will growing them through the winter.

All of the close ups were from plants I had last year. In the group photo at the bottom, the ones in front are from last year. The one you can barely see in the back is new. The Serrano was not cut back; it just never died. There is also a Pequillo that I cut almost to the ground to reduce the bulk before I emptied the pot, but I never got around to emptying the pot, and it just came back. I am in Nor Cal, not too far from Sacramento.

Just like any other perennial, if the plants are treated well, they only get better with age up to a certain point. But I also agree that there is some sentimentality to it also.

Sad pepper I stuck in a pot, mainly just to try and ripen what's on it. I can put it back outside next week if it warms up. If I decide to try and overwinter it I should prune off all the lanky growth?

I don't trim my plants that I bring in for the winter. I just treat them as any 'green' houseplant. When I bring them out in the spring, I tend to have a plant full of buds the first part of May. It just saves time waiting for new ones to grow and larger harvests.

I tried overwintering a couple pots a few years back but I had a persistent aphid problem, so the plants were tossed mid-winter.

Insecticidal soap. Totally natural, non toxic (except to aphids) and best of all, effective. But very true, if you overwinter pepper plants, plan on aphids coming in with them.

The plant I put in a pot looks pretty dead, root damage causing severe wilting.

Speaking of overwintering problems, I had an outbreak of powdery mildew on many of my pepper plants, including two I grew this year from seed, and I don't think I'd seen that in over 20 years of gardening. There might be other variables, but it sure wasn'the rain or humidity here! I used neem oil and they survived. A few of the plants kept some leaves all winter.