Homestead
BDN’s Homestead section is a celebration of rural life. Our writers cover small farms, animals, DIY solutions and fascinating Maine people who find unique ways to live simply. Read more Homestead stories here.
When the first killing frost hits Maine, most pepper plants here end up in the compost pile.
But some are taken inside instead to spend the winter in pots before returning to the ground come spring. For some Maine growers, peppers live for years.
Peppers, and their tomato and eggplant relatives, are technically perennial plants. That means they can produce for multiple years, and in the warmer climates where they originated, that’s what they do.
In Maine, keeping them alive through the cold winter takes a little extra work, but it’ll produce sturdy plants ready to give you double the yield, starting earlier in the season.
Overwintering isn’t a foolproof process, but Mainers are making it work. Stasha Baldwin and her family have been overwintering jalapeno plants for a few years at Wolf Creek Family Farm in Sidney.
They keep the peppers in a spare bedroom through the winter, where they get a little ambient sunlight and enjoy air temperatures between 45 and 55 degrees Fahrenheit. When they return to the outdoors in their second year, the plants produce about twice as many peppers and are hardier than seedlings, according to Baldwin.
Other gardeners have found second-year plants will also bear fruit a few weeks earlier than new ones, extending their growing season.
Baldwin and her fiance Gerry Campbell want more Mainers to grow these older peppers so that they can produce twice the fruit on the same amount of land with a longer growing season.
They plan to find a way to do it at a larger scale by applying for a research grant from the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program, or SARE, administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Baldwin said one of the things they need to determine is how to heat a greenhouse for them efficiently and sustainably.
If you still have nightshade plants in a hoop house or greenhouse and want to try this yourself, you’ll need to prepare. Baldwin digs up peppers and trims the plant down to about two inches above the “node,” where the plant branches apart. This is where growth will come back.
Then, rinse the roots clean, trim them a bit, and pot them in sterile soil. Cutting the leaves, washing the roots and using “new” soil reduces the risk of pests getting established. Some gardeners also rinse the roots with insecticidal soap.
Keeping the peppers in a room below 60 degrees should stop them from trying to grow, and above 45 or 50 will keep the roots from freezing. They won’t need much water; only do so when the soil is completely dry.
So far, this method has about a 50 percent success rate for Baldwin, though she said that rate would be higher if the business of farm life didn’t sometimes cause them to forget about them. If you don’t want to take your chances, peppers and tomatoes can also be planted in pots and moved in and out by season.
Remember they’ll need “hardening off” to get them used to the colder temperatures, accomplished by taking them outside in the morning for about a week, increasing the amount of time before heading back indoors each day. If moving them inside, do the same thing in reverse to avoid shocking them.
Eggplants need really warm temperatures and a lot of sunlight to thrive. You might have success using the same method with them, or you could take a 4- to 6-inch cutting, put it in water until it grows roots and pot it until spring.
For a tomato plant, try to find a warmer and sunnier winter space — a heated greenhouse works, if you have one. A sunny windowsill or garage may work as well.
You can also try a bare root method, where the plant goes dormant until spring. They can be uprooted before the first frost, trimmed down to about a foot of vine with no leaves, and their roots washed or just brushed free of dirt.
Coil up the roots, wrap them in cotton cloth with some damp newspaper strips or moss and wrap in a final layer of plastic. Put the bundles in a paper bag stored in a cool, humid spot.
If you have a very warm spot in your home and extra lighting, you can also bring the entire plant indoors.
