It’s from the supermarket. It has shiny red chillis, a couple of orange ones and a load of green ones.

What next? It’s currently on the kitchen window, in a pot, and the soul is damp.

Clearly I’m not exactly Percy Thrower.

Keep it like that, neither too dry nor too wet: that’s the difficult bit. Watch for greenfly, they may hide under leaves, spraying with soapy water should fix them. Having it stood in a permanent puddle in a tray or saucer is not kind.

probably put it in a bigger pot now.
then use the one you have, put a couple of chilli stalks in, face down, and water. they’ll rot down and the seeds within will likely sprout.

Tomato feed is good for big juicy chillies.

For milder chillies, pick after a good watering.
For hotter ones, make the plant suffer a bit before you pick ’em.

Should I pick the red ones that look ready?

Pick them as you can use them.

If there are lots looking ready, pick them, string them up and dry them.

Pick the red ones, leave the others, make sure it gets plenty of direct sunlight and keep watering it. Yum, good luck with your plant, last year I had three, this year it’s 12

Much easier to grow than tomatoes.

I picked up a plant three years ago from Waitrose. No idea what variety it is but it keeps kicking out fruit.
Just moved country so left it with my sister in the uk 🙁 however, took some dry ones with me and now have five new plants about 6 inches high ( 2 months old )

Easy to look after and super tasty. Ideal man plant.

No idea what variety it is but it keeps kicking out fruit.

When you buy them as plants from the supermarket its a bit hit and miss how productive they’ll be in years to come. A plant is only good for a few years – if you grow one from seed you’ll maybe only get 3 or 4 years of good crops from it.

I suspect some of the one the supermarket sell are already a few years old (they’ve usually been pruned back) and have probably already had a profitable life growing the chillis for sale on the next shelf- they can still belt out a decent crop of chillis that year but its hit and miss whether they’ll be up to much the following year.

If the plant you’ve bought continues to flower you’ll get more fruit if you pollenate the flowers yourself (as in move pollen from flower to flower – not actually impregnate the plant with your own gametes). Picking the chillis as they ripen will encourage it to flower/fruit more too. It should be possible to get 40-50 or so chillis over the course of the summer

If it’s in a small pot it’s probably root bound, which will limit it depending on species.

Repotting is not a bad idea. General rule of thumb if the size of the the plant is equal to the size of the pot, it needs a bigger pot.

Pick them when they’re red and freeze them in a tupperware pot.

Thanks maccruiskeen. That’s a really helpful post.

The new seed grown plans are doing well so hopefully my fruits will be pleantyful and hot 🙂

Also you can freeze them and use them whenever you like then.

You can chop the chillies that are ready up and keep the chopped ones in a jar with white wine vinegar, just add the amount you want to pan and the vinegar cooks off.

I’ve gone a bit mad this year with Jalapeno, red and yellow pepper plants. Have grown them all from seed and now have a greenhouse full, need to get shot of most of them 🙂

Like others have said easy to grow.

If you shop around for seeds you can get interesting stuff that can be more useful for cooking than you find in the shops.

I grew a nice mild variety of Habanero – usually they’re sufficiently hot that you wouldn’t just throw one in the pan with whatever you’re cooking, you’d need to turn them into a sauce or salsa. But the mild version still has the habanero flavour without requiring so much care with dosage. Pretty too – the fruits either turned yellow or purple on their way from green to red.

The only tricky bit with chillis from seed is getting them to germinate – they need an extended period with an ambient temp consistently above 20 -25 degrees to think its mexican spring time. In a 200 year old stone built house with floor to ceiling single glazed windows, at altitude, in scotland, thats not easy – but once they’ve germinated they’re dead easy to grown and give you ample warning if they are suffering from being either over or under watered and rally quickly when you rectify it.

Whatever you do, don’t have it on the windowsill and open the window on a breezy day. Killed my Waitrose plant instantly!

I’ve grown from seeds (Simpson’s seeds I bought from as recommended on here a while ago) and my kitchen windowsill has about 20 40cm high chilli plants growing on it. They’re still too immature to grow chillis, but I’m suspecting a bumper crop on it’s way sometime in the summer! Either that or just 2 mtr high skinny things with big leaves clogging up the place.

(Got them to germinate by keeping in the airing cupboard. 2 trays, 1 germinated completely, the other spawned zero. No idea why.)

Oh yeah – the chillis are called wrecking ball and (I think) bishop’s hat. Should be interesting!

Growing some Apaches (nice amount of heat) from last years seed, started them off in Feb but didn’t repot the into a big pot (12″ diameter – found a video suggesting this was a perfect size, getting no bigger if planet directly in the ground) until last month, as it was still too cold out for them and I couldn’t have that big a pot in the house. They’re growing fruit already but haven’t reached the size they normally do in these pots.. so not sure what going to happen. Still got crap loads of frozen/dried chilli’s from last years so hardly worried though. They are an easy plant to grow, though we have a greenhouse that catchs the sun.

What’s the symptoms of being overwatered?

I’ve got 2 in a mid sized (1.5-2l) pot with an inch of gravel in the bottom, both plants about 50cm high and seem happy, they’re in the conservatory so consistently 25-35C in the daytime and I usually feed them a pint of water (enough that the water starts to run out the bottom of the pot and fill the bowl inderneath) a day to keep the soil saturated and plantfood once a week. I kinda assumed that as long as they weren’t sat in a puddle of water they wouldn’t be overwatered, they certainly drink it all.

I’m not sure supermarkets use plants for more than one season..

You can grow a 1m tall plant covered in chillies within around 16-20 weeks, then yeild drops each subsequent season. Plus, you need to cut the root ball and vegetation right back to encourage new growth. I’d be surprised if thats the route many growers go down rather than just grow fresh from seed/cuttings.
I’ve not had a chilli plant last more than two crops and I grow most seasons.

For anyone interested, I have a decent seedbank of rare and super hot chilli’s. Maybe start up an exchange?

Ach, I have a batch of seeds I’d completely forgotten about (possibly ghost pepper, I can’t actually remember). I suppose it’s too late in the year to be planting them now?

Plant em, they’ll be fine. They like warmth and stillnes

..s.

I usually feed them a pint of water

Mine just get the dregs from the bottom of my commute water bottle. Pint a day sounds a lot!

Cheers.

I’ve never done anything like this before. Is it just a case of wedging them in some soil? (Yeah, I should just google it, I know.)

Ach, I have a batch of seeds I’d completely forgotten about (possibly ghost pepper, I can’t actually remember). I suppose it’s too late in the year to be planting them now?

I think all the superhots have a long growing season ie from germination through to mature fruit. I think growers will be sowing the seeds of these Christmas time or earlier? If planted now the fruit won’t be near maturity by the time the days are well drawn in… Probably. If you’re lucky you can overwinter them but I think they’re difficult to overwinter too.

Is it just a case of wedging them in some soil?

Google’s rubbish, I tell thee.

Mine went in a propagating tray, on thin layer of compost and compost sprinkled over em and water in the tray underneath. They get long thin roots that reach down to the water, so you have to keep it topped up. (Amazing, I let mine dry out and they looked dead, I added water and they stood back up again!)
Then you repot when the leaves start to show, before the roots get too long.

Do they have to be grown indoors if you have no greenhouse

Do they have to be grown indoors if you have no greenhouse

They need to be germinated indoors, then you can move them outdoors when the weather cheers up. They don’t like the cold – freezing is obviously a no-no, but it doesn’t need to get that cold for them to suffer.

My wife planted 1000 Carolina reapers and ghost peppers.

100 germinated 50 grew,.we killed 42 and are.left with 8 fungus ridden plants.

I’ve.fot another 2000plus to plant, what are we doing wrong

My wife planted 1000 Carolina reapers and ghost peppers.

100 germinated 50 grew,.we killed 42 and are.left with 8 fungus ridden plants.

I’ve.fot another 2000plus to plant, what are we doing wrong

I bought a bunch from a grower/ seller, including some super hot (reaper, ghost, etc). From what he said, it sounds like the hotter the chili, the more difficult it is to get it to germinate. Not only do they take longer to germinate, but also they’re more picky about how wet/ dry the soil is – too wet and they get overrun with fungus and don’t germinate; too dry and they just don’t germinate.
So I’d say it sounds like the soil is too wet for them.

^ bloody monsoons for you

Back in February, I planted mine in some of those dried peat pellets, transfered to fibre pots when the roots started showing, kept in a propogator (I let them dry out a bit when mould started appearing). Then 3 inch pots, to be able to keep them in the house longer as it was still cold out, then finally they moved to 12″ pots in the green house. All started from a very dried out pepper, I’d air dried last year, as I’d been let down by the heat of mail order seeds. I water them every day (green house is in a very sunny spot), but won’t let them sit with water in the dish & do intermittently let the peat dry out a bit

Bump!
Chillis like green bollocks are appearing on my plant… how do I know when they is ready to pick??

Probably be when they turn red, which will be a while off yet judging by their size and greeness. Give it 8 weeks (guessing).

Dez B – is your plant getting enough light? It looks a bit leggy.

looks just fine, they look good man, let them be for a bit longer though, wait for a colour change, do you know what type of chilli it is? Scotch Bonnet maybe?

It looks a bit like this, lobes in stead of one long fruit.

not this

Leggy? I tell you, they are so damn tall! Is that why, cos not enough light?
They’re in the lightest place they can be, not a lot of choice really!
Still, chillis are appearing so I’m happy with em.

They’re either friar’s hat or wrecking ball, depending which packet they came out of. Wrecking ball, I’d guess by the look of em.