Hope I can nurture the peppers and hanging on tomatoes along for a few more weeks Lord willing here in N. Tx. The little serrano peppers are starting to pop out after all this time but I planted it a little late from seed in early June. The heat in August almost killed it but it came back to life. Still picking arugula and basil daily to supplement the salads.
I will miss them in the winter or maybe I can cold frame them and see what happens—my first time ever trying it.
I grow basil in a pot indoors in the winter. I have a basil plant that I planted the first year I gardened in 2010. Dug it up and put it in a pot to bring inside.
I had fresh basil all winter, just kept harvesting it, and then took the pot outside in the spring kept repeating-it is still doing fine. I’ll be cutting it back any day now to bring indoors.
Well, I took a sheet of plastic and draped it over a metal bar that I have at the back of one of my raised beds. Overlapped the sides. I am hoping that will warm them up enough to make it a while longer.
Cold frame will work for a while, maybe put a 100 watt bulb in there to help keep it warm at night? Might make it last a little longer.
As soon as we get notice of a frost warning, I will cut off all the tomato limbs that still have green tomatoes and/or floweres, and stick them in a big pot of soil, after taking the leaves off the bottom part.
It’ll make roots at every joint, so I try to get as long a stem as I can. If it is flexible enough, I wind it around the pot a couple of times. The fruit continues to mature, and the flowers make fruit with a little help pollinating them.
Some of the stems die off, but some generally make enough roots to keep growing and producing through winter, albeit slow growth. Those peppers can be dug up and brought into the house too.
My indoor winter garden is in front of a patio door that faces southwest. I also have a full spectrum grow light that I use when the days are cloudy and for a few hours when the days are really short.
If you have a window somewhere, you might want to experiment with these and/or some herbs.