Pollinating the pepper plant with Q-tips is overkill. Peppers and tomatoes are not bee-pollinated, so all you need do (if anything at all) is to give the flowering plants a tap around noontime. I brought in four pepper plants last fall (all over a year old by now), and though I rarely even did this, I had more peppers than I could use this winter. Granted, I wasn't making stuffed peppers or the like.

Flowering didn't occur the first month indoors (perhaps due to the potting process), but after that, flowering was continuous.

I don't think there is anything in particular you need to do to "perennialize" a pepper; nature has already made it so. All you have to do is keep it alive, same as any other perennial plant.

Is it growing in just that plastic cup? If so, I think I would get it a bigger pot. ;) More likely to survive in something larger than that cup.

Dave

Chaman,

It looks as if you are using plastic cups to propagate the plants by air layering. Am I right?

I always am inspired by your pics. Perhaps, a year from now, I will have an overwintered chile pepper like yours. Thanks for posting.

Jim

I have a thai chili plant that has grown it whole life indoors. Its going on 3 years old now. Does fine. Never pollinated it.

I have a few chiles that I've wintered over for 2 years now. No pollination. These are kept in a sunny unheated room where the temp goes down to around 45 in the colder months.

Yes Jim , You figured out it right.Plastic cups are used to propagate the pepper plant by air layering.

Dave, the plant is in the terri cotta color plastic pot.Plastic cups are for air layering.

I am glad to hear from fellow gardeners for their experience.Thanks every one for the input.

Can someone explain to me what "air layering" is? Thanks!

westtexan,
Air layering is one of the methods of plant propagation when a long enough branch is not available to burry in the ground for rooting.The method of burrying the branch in the ground is known as Ground Layering.
A branch at a farther distance from the ground level covered in the soil enclosed in the burlap or a plastic cup for rooting is known as air layering.Same method is used to prpagate the plant from the stem when branches are not available for rooting as shown in the pepper plant I have posted.

How interesting! I have never heard of "air layering". Doesn't the weight of the dirt in the cups cause the stalk to snap? How does it support that? Is there some other support that I'm not seeing?

~Sam