Wednesday 24 October 2012

Pruning a chilli plant for overwintering !

So, less text this time.
How to prepare a plant for overwintering in the house with normal heat and light.

This is the plant that started leaning and hat some bad spots, too moist and too cold.
So before it is too late, I will have to prune and re pot it.

The first spots started due to a very light night frost.

The rough cutting I do with pruning shears, first the bad spots about 10 cm over to the good branches.

Then I take a knife to do the fine trimming. The branches are cut as far that the main stem is just about not damaged. The round breast like form around the place where the branch comes out, has got wound healing tissue in it and will grow over the cut in no-time.

This is how it looks after carefully cutting it close to the stem.

The ground can be shaken or rinsed out of the rooting system, all brown or mushy looking roots need to be cut out. Percentage wise you can cut as much roots as you did branches.

In the new pot you can add some manure worms, to eat rotten parts from the roots and hold back mould.
The worms will also feed the plant, and the plant will smell different keeping aphids away.

This is how it looks after cutting and pruning. The 2 stems will make 2 nice tree forms if I cut the branches at the bottom next year.


The rest of the good branches hung up to ripen off the chillies, and the dropped chillies with banana in the fruit basket.!

hoped you liked the tips,

Yours sincerely,

Bart J. Meijer

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