How to Harvest Peppers From the Same Plant Year After Year

Did you know that pepper plants are perennial and you can grow peppers on the same plant year after year? Hi I'm Christy and I'm a Provident Pepper. Last fall we dug all of these plants out of our garden and have been harvesting peppers on them all winter long through our indoor garden. Now it's time to plant them back in our outdoor garden so that we can enjoy peppers all summer long. Come check it out! After years of gardening this year I made a discovery that will change the way that I garden forever. And that is that pepper plants are actually perennials. And peppers are really hard because they have to have a certain temperature. They have to be nice and warm before they'll grow well and then they take a while to produce. And so in our area we have the short growing season and I only have this small window of time when my peppers can be highly productive. But last year just before the first hard frost hit I dug up all of my pepper plants and I potted them. And I took them inside and put them in my indoor garden. And so I pruned them really well so it took a little while for those leaves to come back. But within a month I had peppers growing in my indoor garden. And I created this really cool video where I show you the different kinds of lighting. We had regular sunlight through the window. We had commercial grow lights. We had LED lights and we had shop lights. And I actually compared how productive the peppers were inside my garden depending on what kind of light. So if you click the card in the corner we'll take you to that video and you can watch that. But these are those same pepper plants that we planted or that we dug up last year. Kept them inside our indoor garden harvest all winter long. And now it's time that we plant them back out in our regular garden. And I am really excited about this. Now there were a couple problems that we had. Pests in an indoor garden are really quite a pain. And so sometimes once during the season I had to prune them back really good and kind of start over just because the pests have gotten so bad. So I'm working on learning how to take care of all that. But it is a process. When we planted these out here the first thing that I did was to harvest the majority of fruit that was on them. We had some really good sized peppers. But when I transplant anything I want those roots to be able to take hold. And so we we just had to pull them off. You can tell there's some beautiful flowering going on here. And so it's not going to be very long. And we've even got some little peppers that I left. And so we should be producing peppers really soon. Now one of the things that I thought was interesting I was anticipating that these peppers would be very root bound once I transplanted them. And quite frankly they weren't. I was really surprised that the space that I had given them to grow in was pretty adequate. I do think that it controlled the size of the pepper and didn't allow it to get super large. Being planted out here in this garden these peppers are going to flourish and they will grow really large. Now we in these new beds we these are hugel beds. And we have a video on that if you want to click the card in the corner I'll take you to this the video that we created about our hugel beds. But in the bottom is wood. And then we have put wood chips and different organic matter and manure and rabbit manure and then some of the garden soil that we had taken off of this spot when we put in these raised beds. Because this is where our traditional garden was for many years. So that soil is really good stuff and that's what's on top. So the plants weren't root bound which was great. But if you look at this soil there's even a rabbit manure and there's all kinds of really good stuff in this soil. So I didn't treat it with anything else because I really like to grow organically whenever possible. And then we planted these. Then as soon as I planted them I watered them really really well and put a nice thick layer of mulch. Now I haven't gotten to this bed but that bed's finished. And I've got some other ones over here that I just ran out of a little bit of time. But I wanted to make sure I got this video for you so that you could see how incredibly spectacular it is to just be able to plant these peppers year after year. Now my plan is actually not to replant these peppers or not to pot these peppers and put them back into my home after this growing season. Because I have a new crop of peppers that I'm planting that I'll plant in the other garden. And these newer plants will take a lot longer to produce. But I think that they will be younger and we won't have to worry with some of the age issues with plants in the indoor garden and the size. So we have our new crop. We have our older crop. Now as because we have such large pepper plants we want to make sure that we stake these. And I have tried in the past to use some tomato cages with sort of limited success. And so what I've decided to do this year is Jonathan cut some rebar for me. And I'm just using pieces of rebar because they won't degrade right. That piece of rebar will be in my garden forever. So it's quite cost effective when you're gardening year after year to be able to have something like this. But this stake is a stake that we put this little cap on just because this top is dangerous right. And so we want to make sure that nobody gets hurt. So we just bought these caps and put on them. Some of the other ones like this one Jonathan bent the end of the rebar. That was what we were going to do first. And then he just decided oh you know what it would just be better to get the caps. And so we've got both of them in this garden. But I think that provides some really good support for the plants. When we planted these I pruned these peppers really well. First I got rid of all the foliage that was down below so that we could have so that none of the leaves would drop onto the soil and be dirty or get diseased. Or we want lots of air flow there. And so I just cleaned them up at the bottom. Then I also took off any leaves that were diseased or that didn't look good from being indoors. Some of them I actually had to really prune them back. And others I didn't have to prune so much. It just kind of depended on the plant. But we're being in an indoor garden. The pests and the diseases it's much harder to grow indoors I think than outdoors. There's some things like the quick turnover crops like lettuce and greens. Those I didn't have much of a problem at all with any type of disease. But these were that already been out in the garden. And then we took them inside right with their original soil. And there's there's just more of a chance for insects and disease. And so while it was still great we produced a lot of food I wanted to make sure that when I pruned these up that I didn't bring any of that disease into our new garden. So those were all pruned and disposed of. One other thing about pruning is don't be afraid to prune. Most plants not all of them but the majority of plants will benefit greatly when you aren't afraid to give them a good pruning. I mentioned that I don't like to monocrop which is growing one thing all together in one place. So one bed of something and another bed of something else. Because when you poly crop or when you put more than one plant species together it has some great benefits in the soil in attracting beneficial insects and keeping diseases under control. So personally I really like to poly crop. And one of the ways that I do this with our peppers is that I plant the peppers in different clusters all over the garden. So and I separate them so that I plant the sweet peppers in one place and the hot peppers in another place. Now we brought all these peppers out from our indoor garden and we put them in a shady spot where they'd get part sun and part shade. So that it would take a few days for them to harden off because they were under the lights in there and so they had just become a little bit weaker. We needed the sun not to burn them. So we spent a few days doing that and we had picked off most of the peppers and then suddenly the plants weren't marked. And some of them I can't tell if they were the hot peppers or the bell peppers. So we have a little area where there might be mixed peppers and I won't save seeds from that area. But I will save seeds from the hot area and from the sweet pepper area. But I just don't want my sweet peppers to taste like jalapenos. It just doesn't work for me. Even as an experienced gardener I am learning new things every year and every year my garden gets better and better and I make fewer and fewer mistakes. But I do make mistakes every year. It's part of the learning process and it's so incredible to be able to grow your own food. And now while we're watching prices skyrocket and shortages happening it's a better time than any to be able to learn how to grow your own food in your own backyard. Oh that's something else about the pepper plants that I forgot to mention. And that is that you can actually clone pepper plants also. So at the end of the season if you don't want to to pot the whole thing you can actually take a clipping and root it in water and then grow it in a pot indoors and get a huge jump on your pepper plants for the next season. This is the year to grow a garden. If you've never grown a garden before it's time to start. If you've grown a garden before wow it's a year to put a little bit more time and energy into it and make sure that we're having an abundance of food not only for our own families but to share with those in need. And now for the question of the day. What experience do you have growing peppers and what tips and tricks can you provide for our audience? Comment below and thanks for being part of the solution.