Gardening

I'm no expert, but I have some experience growing chillies over the years. Whenever I've grown them it's been a selection of seedlings from the nursery, or at best a single young plant. Sometimes I grew them in pots, but these days I'm using beds. Currently I'm at the tail end of our growing season with two different varieties (a birds eye and a Thai) sharing a raised bed with some spring onions and rhubarb.

Every time I've grown chilli I've found that they start slow, then explode in size, then fruit. I always end up with more than I can eat. I'd go as far as to say that they seem to thrive on neglect. I don't top them, rarely feed them, and they just keep performing. I certainly don't treat different types differently. My beds are currently a mix of old clay soil, compost, some ash from the fire, with some granular fertilizer and topped with a straw mulch. I harvest 20 or so per week and leave the rest. I generally get 3 or more months worth this way. My planting notes for this batch say I planted these in December, and started harvesting in March. Both plants are still going strong and loaded with fruit in varied stages of ripeness. I am expecting a few more weeks yet.

I've never really tried to keep them going over winter, as we get fairly severe frosts here. We're already getting nights below freezing, but so far, so good. The plants get good sun in the morning and middle of the day, but by mid afternoon they're in shade.

Hope that helps.

I’ve had some success overwintering my peppers — I keep them in my house, heated to around 65F, and I do get a little growth, but no fruit. I wouldn’t expect much success just above freezing — they really are hot weather plants, and I would be surprised if they tolerated the cold in a small container. I did lose my entire crop this winter to bugs, though, so I might just be a little traumatized (I think my mistake was drying herbs in the same room I overwintered the peppers, so when I applied the neem oil, the bugs just waited in the drying herbs until it was safe to come out).

The different varieties do have different needs. My Birds Eye’s and Thai chilies will fruit basically no matter what I do, but the hotter varieties, like my habaneros, require a little more attention to get a good crop — topping your hab was probably much more important for it’s yield than the Thai. Generally speaking, the less you water chilis and the hotter the weather, the hotter your resulting peppers will be. On average, I tend to overwater my peppers because they don’t need it as much as the tomatoes they share a raised bed with.

If you end up with too many peppers at the end of the season (this is very likely), I’d strongly recommend making hot sauce with them. You’ll likely want to cut the habaneros with something cooler to make a more approachable sauce; my favorite is peaches, but cooler peppers like Anaheims work well if you want something more savory. If you’re looking for something really flavorful, fermenting the peppers for a couple months before rendering the sauce brings an incredible tang that’s hard to find in commercial sauces.

Most chilli can't take cold at all so would need to be overwintered inside. The exception to this is rocoto chilli, they are native to the Andes and are, imo, the nicest chilli out there. They are the only chilli/capsicum that I've grown that survives over winter, We just leave them outside in the garden bed where I come from, but it probably doesnt get as cold here as it does for you. They are a largish bush like chilli and are very prolific at fruiting. The flavour is spicy but sweet and tropical, so absolutly delicious and awesome for chilli sauce or just eaten fresh as part of a meal.