Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Any guidelines or direction when cutting back these varieties. Mine are about done and Im unsure of the correct way to trim them back. Or is it not worth taking them through winter.

Certainly any dead branches should come off. Whether or not they will survive winter depends on the chilli, some last a year, others I've had growing for 5, but I haven't seem many much older than that...

I just prune them next season. Trim any dead bits through winter.
YES - keep them until next season, you will have twice as many flowers and fruit from my experiments this year.

I had one 'Habenero' that got rotten in the middle so I trimmed it out. Thought it was a goner, but into the garden it went. Its a mammoth with heaps of chilli's now.

Trimming tip - they are pretty fragile and get strageley, I would try to make them bushier.

They love greenhouses in the winter

Yep keep them for sure. Give them a good clipping and put them somewhere that wont get frosted. I just moved the ones I had in the ibc system into the big system that will have a greenhouse of sorts over it soon

Thanks dudes.

Is it better to cut on or close to joins? Should I keep some kind of length to the main plants?

Well if you look at the structure when you pull the limbs and fruit off, there is this thicker part. I rekon thats the place for small branches, which naturally if you try to yank a fruit off you sometimes get some branch as well.

This is a good read
http://www.agric.wa.gov.au/objtwr/impor ... f06499.pdf




But this is not what I experienced with my chili plant.

Dunno but you will have a few leaders so cut some back hard the let one or two be a bit longer. I guess all chilly plants are the same but

Not my experience either, my peppers grow away quickly when the wether warms and produce big time

Nor mine.... if anything the plant grew back and produced more vigorously than the year before...