""of course kept sprouting initially so I had to keep removing them to concentrate the energy going into the roots.""

WHAT?......where did you hear/read that tidbit.........

You are supposed to allow them to re-grow over-winter.......

I too have 5 plant I have over wintered. I allowed all the leave grow back in, but have trimmed them down 3 times since to keep the size down. Is the stem still trying to push out leaves? If not then I'm not so sure about the fate of the plants.

Show pictures. I overwinter outdoors and sometimes the less cold tolerant types have a little die back and I prune them. The black or brown tips is dead tissue. If it is at the tips it is ok, but if the black/browning covers the main stem it could be dead. Even after I prune my peppers the black/browning comes back but stays at the tips.

Sorry, I'm a novice at this sort of thing. I thought you were supposed to take away the sprouts and let all the energy do into the roots until spring. My mistake...I've started to upload pic's of what they are like..

pic 2

pic 3

pic 4

I think, when trimming back, you have to leave a few leave intact. Or at least let it grow some new leaves. Plants like peppers need some leaves for photo synthesis to stay alive. They have some store of food in the nutrients, but without leaves the roots cannot produce anything.
Incidentally, I over winter one small ornament pepper and I treated it as I said. Now it is alive and well.

Hmm, looks like I may have been too drastic in cutting them back and preventing the shoots from growing then. Is there any way to salvage these plants? I got a good lot of chillies from these plants last year so I really don't want to lose them.
Any advice would be most appreciated.

Yep, you should have left some foilage on the plants throughout the winter. Initially, you could have basically stripped them clean and they would have come back quickly which it sounds like they did for you. However, after that, you always want to leave some green foliage on the plants throughout the winter. You can keep trimming the branches back, but not to the point that you remove all the leaves.

That being said, I would definitely not give up on those plants yet. They could very well be in a state of full. If they are being kept in a cool place, try adding a bit more heat and as much sunlight as possible. That might snap them out of it. There have been many stories of people growing peppers outside and the peppers die back all the way to the ground level in the fall with the cold. Then, if it doesn't get too cold during the winter, when the sun and warmth returns, those plants all of a sudden start putting out shoots from the stump near ground level. So, like I said, give them heat and sun and see what happens. Those stalks still look pretty green to me. If you care to, you could cut into a green section on one of the stems and see if it is all dried out or if it is still green. But cutting them back any further at this point will only do them more harm.

Oh, and one other thing. When pruning (trimming) a pepper plant or most plants for that matter, you always want to trim just above a node. A node is the part of a pepper plant where there is a junction for a leaf or a branch. It looks like you did that pretty well except for that last pepper.

Hi there esox07, Thanks for the feedback, very much appreciated. Currently the plants sit on my kitchen windows cill and have been there since end of Oct last year.
I'm in Scotland so their was no way they were going to survive outside the house due to our harsh winters. It's also just as well that I didn't leave them in the Greenhouse as we suffered very bad storms over the Xmas holidays and half the glass in my greenhouse has been destroyed. I'm going to have to replace with a polycarbonate substitute I think.

As for the plants themselves they were doing very well up until a coupe of weeks ago, still putting out shoots even then....but I didn't realise you had to leave at least some of leaves on the plant. The kitchen is quite warm so the soil dries out over the period of a week so I water periodically. I watched this video on how to overwinter the plants...maybe this isn't quite right. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fyInICbb4w

That video looked fine to me. He trimmed it just about how I would do it. Notice, he trimmed just above the nodes or "NODULES" as he called them. I think where you went wrong was the constantly defoliating the plant. It would be fine to continue to trim it back throughout the winter, however, it needs the leaves to collect sunlight and produce energy for the plant. But, I still think your plants might be fine. They likely just went dormant. Like I said, plants grown outside will come back the next spring even if they died back all the way to the ground in the fall as long as they didn't get a hard freeze. They plants die back and go dormant until the sun and heat returns. That won't happen where I live though. We have a meter of snow on the ground and temps have been regularly in the -20 Celsius range at night. This only happens where the nights generally stay above 0 Celsius in the winter.
So, hopefully, your plants are just in a dormant state from being pruned so much and they will rebound with time, heat and sun. I wouldn't do much fertilizing right now however. Keep us posted.
Bruce

Thanks again Bruce,

Yes I do see now from the video how he trimmed above the nodes. I tried to follow suit when I trimmed the plans back.....I agree it's my constant picking off the shoots that's caused the main problem. I guess all I can do is play the waiting game and see if they spring back into life later this year.

Sounds like your winter is worse than ours.

I'll be sure to post again if they find a new lease of life.

Cheers, Dave

Great advice from Bruce. He's right.
All that green stem is still viable, so I agree not to give up. But definitely let these peppers regrow some foliage. The new foliage is what makes the energy that is sent to the roots and then stored/used. Pinching off the *flowers* is what keeps the plant in a vegetative state producing foliage.

Josh

Your plants will probably survive. The only one that looks bad is pic #1. If the blackness continues down the main stem cut it. But A little browning/blackening at the tips is normal. I have cut plants down exactly like yours look with no leaves whatsoever and they comes back. The main stems are still green which means they are still alive. There is also several buds reserved for them to sprout new leaves. Keep doing what you are doing and they should come back in the Spring. If at all possible add more heat/light just to help them out a little more. I over winter many plants outdoors and have cut some down like yours and they come back.

Thanks for all your advice everyone. It's greatly appreciated

> "I thought you were supposed to take away the sprouts and let all the energy [g]o into the roots"

Energy? What energy? The sprouts / leaves are what produce the energy when exposed to light. By trimming off the leaves you are actually starving the roots.

That said, I think they'll be alright. Just don't trim any more leaves, and don't let them get totally dry. (You've got the right idea about not overwatering in winter - just don't overdo it.)

Good luck!

Dennis