Hello my name's Heather I work here at the nursery at RHS Hyde Hall and I do quite a
lot of the propagation as you can see from the back here. What I'm going to be talking to you
about today is overwintering chillis. So why do we actually overwinter chillis? Well as you can see
from this plant here it's still in flower and it is actually producing nice amounts of fruit
but as the light levels start to reduce and that's usually happening around about now
at the end of October, the leaves are starting to yellow and in another couple of three weeks with
the light levels really closing down, this plant will lose quite a lot of its leaves. It comes from
Central and South America so it is used to a certain amount of light and in this Northern
altitude of Britain of course it's not getting enough light. So what we can do is put it into
hibernation for the winter so that next year we'll have an earlier start. So why do this? Well
some chillis take quite a lot of time to germinate especially the ones like the habaneros, they can be
five six weeks to germinate, so if we can overwinter these plants we will actually get
a head start on our chilli production next year and hopefully you'll get a bigger yield as well.
So I'll talk about this particular chilli first it's a Capsicum annum, sounds a bit complicated
still is a perennial. It has a really nice crop of chillies on it still, so the first thing we've
got to do is I'm afraid remove the chillies. If you over winter a chilli with the fruit still on
it doesn't do so well, you have to take all the chillies off. It's about preserving the structure
the root ball and the stems to get through the winter. So we've got a lovely specimen here, first
of all what I'm going to do is take off the four canes that are holding it up. What will probably
happen is that it will actually fall apart but as we cut back it will hopefully spring back up.
There we go that one's off.
Wow they really are lax, you really do need to stake them well. So here we have the basic
framework so what I'm basically going to do is actually start by cutting this particular
chilli down by half. What we're going to try and find are these particular joints here.
So as you can see there is a V shape on the break of this stem.
At that particular point there is where the next fruiting is going to happen, so it's nice
to preserve these particular joints in the chilli because that's where you're going to start to get
the first chilies for next year. So what I need to do is cut down to a good pair of leaves, just above
looks a bit drastic, but as the season goes by these chilies will actually defoliate anyway.
And as we move around the plant
still trying to preserve the breaks
I'm usually cutting about one good pair of leaves
above the break in the stem and the reason for doing that is the energy in that stem will be
hopefully enough to promote a new flowering shoot for next year. If we cut right down to the base
there may not be enough energy in that leaf node to actually produce a flowering chute so
this gives it a bit more of a fighting chance. Again all of the leaves will actually fall off
of this in the next couple of three weeks so you will just be left with a bare framework of stem.
So as you can see, as I'm working my way around the plant
you can just see how much of the stem and leaves are actually coming off, which is around about half
and again if you have any fruiting stems, these need to come off, again we don't need any fruit
left over on the plant, and if we have any other foliage at the base again what I will try and do
is cut back, probably leaving two leaf joints to leave a good structure.
So that looks pretty drastic. I won't be wasting any of these fruits because they're
actually going to be really tasty right the way through the winter, but this is basically
the structure that we have left, and as I said to you before in another couple of weeks this will
just be stems, there won't be any leaves left on this particular plant. As you can see now that the
actual fruit has been taken off of it, it is fairly sturdy and I wouldn't actually need to
re-stake this particular plant. So now I've got it into this state this can go back to where it was
from, it could come back to a very nice sunny windowsill, it could go back to a conservatory,
if it goes back to a greenhouse, it really does need to be heated so that it doesn't fall below
seven degrees and as the winter progresses we're going to be watering probably around about
once a fortnight, so the water levels are going to drop down. Because the leaves have fallen off
there won't be any transpiration of water loss so therefore we can reduce watering. I'm going
to leave it in the same pot as well but around about February or March you'll start to notice
especially on the leaf nodes, the leaf joints, you will start to see new buds breaking and
this is the key to let you know that the plant needs to be potted up. I will pot it up, this is
a three litre pot, it needs to be potted up into the next size, around about five litres. It needs
new compost and most importantly of all, it's going to need re-staking. It won't be long at all from
around about March to April before this starts to grow and produce this sort of foliage again,
for next year's growth. One thing to mention when you're overwintering a chilli is although
you have a nice framework at the moment, it's quite natural for these stems to actually die back. You
can always spot when they've died back because they change colour, they won't be green anymore
that's quite natural that happens all the time all you have to do is make sure that
you cut below where it's dyed back into good green growth again and it will reshoot back from there
but don't worry if it defoliates and don't worry if you have any stems that die back. So as you can
see from here, we have a mixture of fruit ripe and unripe. What you can do is put these all in a nice
warm place and they will all ripen together. Once they're ripened you can then dry them, or like I do,
I actually freeze them. What I do is I tend to chop them up and I put them into little freezer bags
and freeze them once they're all ready. I don't mind a mixture of red and green anyway. I think
the green has a lot more spice and it gives a lot more piquancy, especially to things like green thai
chilli. I'd like to talk a little bit more about Capsicum chinense. This is a really interesting
chilli variety. It can overwinter in your house without having to be cut down. You can treat it
like a house plant. It comes from the Caribbean and it comes from Central America so it's used to
quite a lot of heat. It likes a lot of humidity as well, so it's a really good
plant to grow in the kitchen or if you've got a shower in the bathroom you can put it in there.
It's also a chilli that doesn't require such high light levels. It's used to being grown under a
canopy in a rainforest so it can actually live quite happily in your house, It is what's called
phototrophic, so it will need turning to make sure that it doesn't go lopsided and go towards the sun.
And the way you can put more humidity around the plant is that you can put it onto
a saucer filled with gravel and then fill the saucer full of water and that will evaporate
and create a nice humidity bubble around the chilli. So we don't have to over winter chillies
some of the easiest ways to grow chillies is to actually buy them and you can have them as a plant
and they will actually produce fruit for you quite quickly. If you do want to go down the route of
sowing seeds, it's how I grow them, it's around about February that you want to start
them off. They do need a long growing season with annuums they only take about seven days to germinate
but as I say with some of the chinense types, the habanero types, they can take five to six weeks so
you can see the benefits of actually starting to overwinter them. We're quite lucky here we
have an RHS Shop and you can also buy your seeds and your plants here when you visit the Gardens.