The Little Jalapeno Plant That Could… Grow All Winter Long!

The Spring garden season has begun already, can you believe that? Seeds have been planted inside that will be transplanted in March. There’s broccoli, cauliflower, kale, onions, bok choy and collard greens planted so far. I’ll be doing a full post on planning soon, so keep a eye out on it!

But for this post, I wanted to celebrate a jalapeno plant. This special jalapeno plant grew all Summer long and somehow as of January 22, in the middle of Winter, it’s still producing jalapeno peppers every single week. How did we do it? Well we didn’t, the plant did it. How did we help it? Well that I an discuss….

First, a little list of dates as you know I love the facts.
Jalapeno seed planted: March 22
Transplanted seedling to the roof: May 1
Moved From Roof to Inside: November 10, 2014
January 21, 2015: Still producing peppers inside…

When cleaning up the garden for Winter in November, we noticed the jalapeno plants were still growing small peppers on them, including producing new flowers.   Knowing that the plant would never survive Winter outside we began thinking how we could save it. I mean wasn’t the plant trying to tell us something?

So we thought, couldn’t we try moving the plant indoors? Sure, there would be shock, but we’d put it near a window, but would there be enough light? Well there’s only one way to try I guess.  So we moved it from it’s 5 gallon bucket to a regular planter bucket.  We did this so bugs wouldn’t come into the house, and also because the 5 gallon bucket has a watering hole in it. 

  

Can we first check out the amazing roots on this one jalapeno plant grown in a bucket?  Amazing!
  

So after the meticulous effort of getting the plant from bucket to container without breaking the plant, we finally got it in.

The new planter needed some additional potting mix so we filled it up.
  

So then we hulked up and carried this jalapeno plant down to our apartment.

We put him (its a boy, ok?) on our wire shelf at the very top next to the window.  At this time it was all a experiment, would this work at all or would the plant be dead within days?

And then within a few weeks, the plants baby jalapeno peppers started to grow into full size.  The plant itself also slowly starting to change from a yellow plant to a lush green plant. 

And the plant kept growing… even when it was snowing out the window.

New flowers started to appear on the plant…

And then a few days ago, we picked all the jalapeno peppers off.   There was a great mixture of green jalapenos and red jalapenos. 

    

And then we sat back and thought “Little jalapeno plant, you are the best!” while marveling at our fresh jalapeno peppers in the middle of January when it’s 20 degrees out.

  

      

Did I mention that as of today, there are new flowers growing on the plant? Again?  I don’t think anything can stop this jalapeno plant from growing!

This is something we’ll continue to do every year now, no jalapeno plant will be left behind, they’ll all move indoors with us!
I hope this caused some garden smiles and also will help you bring some of your Fall garden indoors with you!  Sometimes that little plant can just do magical things…