Overwintering King of the North

[suvoth]

I am very new to gardening and have read that you can overwinterize your pepper plants. Is this possible with King of the North peppers?

I have never grown King of the North, but I do have peppers overwinter.

A couple of pepper species (Capsicum baccatum and C. chinense) are very late, and
barely produce anything before a killing frost in my garden. I grow them in big
pots which I put outside in summer and bring inside before frost. I have several
plants of Cambuci, which are about three years old. They produce small peppers
all winter at a window in the house.

I also potted a lot of C annuum that had been producing fruit in the garden
and put them in a greenhouse which stays about the same temperature
as outside, except it doesn't go below freezing. So it is about 5 C (40 F)
all winter. They continued to ripen their peppers during the winter, then
a lot of them died. However, some are still alive, and are now putting out
flowers and new leaves.

I don't know whether these are particularly suited to overwintering, as
this is the first year I tried them, but these are the survivors:

Anaheim, Chinese Giant Sweet, Conquistador, Dedo de Moca, Early Calwonder,
Gourmet, Jupiter, Pizza, Quadrato d'Asti

[suvoth]

Thanks for the info. I've got King of the North peppers growing right now and one mystery pepper (grabbed seeds from an organic "sweet long red" pepper I liked).

[tecolote]

I overwintered 6 pepper plants this year. 25 years ago when I lived in the Calif. Sierras, a lone pepper (the rare Marchant Calif. Wax), survived under a piece of plastic and a coating of snow thru the winter. It was too weak to ever recover, but it lived.

Fast forward 25 years and I tracked down a source for Marchant. Research told me it was brought to Calif. by Chilean or Peruvian immigrants, and originated in the Andes. So last year I potted seedlings from Marchant, Lemon Drop (another Andean immigrant), de Arbol (Mex., trans., 'tree pepper'), Serrano (Mex., 'mountain pepper'), and 2 Fish peppers ,because they were in pots as ornamentals, anyway.

I pruned them back heavily to fit under a bank of lights for the winter and watched. The SA plants flourished, the Marchant even sending out long tendrils around the lights to get to higher light banks. One grew 30"s in a matter of weeks. The Mexican plants and the Fish plants started fruiting like crazy, and I worried they would fruit and die.

So I decided to enforce dormancy. Cut light back to very little, cut down on water, and pruned drastically. There were still small clusters of green leaves in the center of the plants.

Stated breaking dormancy in March when I start my tomatoes, eggplant and peppers and that corner of my living room resembles a super-nova. They now all live outside most nights, surrounding their younger siblings, and setting an example.

King of the North sounds like an excellent choice for overwintering. I grow it and will pot one up this year.

About Serranos, most serrano seed sold here is Serrano Tampiqueno, a variety from the hot, humid, lowlands. If you see a Serrano with Hairy leaves, it is probably a highland Serrano

[suvoth]

Thanks, I;'ll give it a shot!