HELP! Overwintered peppers dying
 

Have Bishop's Cap and Anaheim peppers that have been overwintering in filtered light and were doing very well up until 3 weeks ago. The leaves started to droop, they were not dry and never overwatered. The situation has progressed so that I believe both plants are dead. Let me know if you have any ideas or if the plants can be saved. Any and all advice is appreciated.
Muddy Buckets

I don't know what went wrong there. To me it looks like they got too dry, but you say that is not the case. So, what I would do is lift the plants out of the pots and take a look at their roots. If the roots appear to still be OK then I would rinse off the existing soil and replant them with a new mix and hope for the best. They may or may not re-sprout. It's a crap shot. If the roots are dead, well then they are toast.

Best of luck!

That was my plan for tomorror, may let the roots soak for 10 minutes or so before replanting...hope they come back to life. Thanks for the comment.

I lost 2 plants I was overwintering.
The leaves and stems look "sweaty" then the plant dies.
Has to be some root related problem.

Muddy... May not be the same problem, but ones I had overwintered looked and did the same as yours. I figured they was toast and just stuck them outside. Can you put them outside in the sunshine and if you have cool nights, bring them back in. I drug my sticks in and out for weeks til temps stayed stable enough for them to stay out full time. I feed em, watered them along with other plants, but basically ignored them and mine came back beautifully, just took time.

I agree with Miss S. Give em some fresh soil and a bigger pot.

Took a couple of weeks, but those dead sticks of mine came back to life. There wasn't enough sunlight from the window to keep the leaves going and to be able to photosynthesize. Plus even though your room may feel warm, air around the windows is cold. Them peppers want some heat and full sun.

Since they starting to leaf out, are you giving them some weak ferts? Probably no nutrients left in the soil.

I'd cut the stem back even further, another a couple of inches. You have nothing to lose.

Sorry about your plants. I'm not sure what happened either. I've been overwintering chilies for the last 5 years or so. I'd say that about 75% survive, and the ones that don't I usually attribute to me forgetting to water at some point mid winter.

I know that plenty of people do prune back as much as you did, but I don't. I leave most of the main stem and a number of secondary branches with a few nodes each. 95%+ of the foliage is removed.

In addition, I don't think that my plants ever go fully dormant. It's just that their growth slows way down mid winter. When the days begin to get longer again they begin to grow stems/leaves again. They get some indirect light in a hallway throughout the winter. When I put them outside again in May I trim them back again.

Here are a couple of mine. When I cut them back in the fall I left almost no leaves.
[IMG]http://imgur.com/a/3MvEV[/IMG]

I would also wash the roots and replant. There is some kind of soil or root problem there.

I would have guessed over watering, but if you are sure that is not the problem, then something else is going on. I would also water with a weak kelp solution, and take the drop pans away to be sure tehre is not an accumulation of water in the soil.

I've found that potting them into a smaller container can sometimes save unwell pepper plants