Chilli Growing (Merged Thread)

debtbegone

I've just found this thread - think I'm going to be wandering over to the greenfingered board more often!

I bought some chilli and bell pepper plants from a local school sale - the kids have a club where they grow all sorts in their polytunnel and greenhouse and at the end of terms sell some of their wares to raise funds - so I've not had to grow these from seed.

My dad built a large cold frame outside (I'm still living at home at the mo) so fingers crossed for my plants! He's also a bit of a gardening fanatic so is keeping me clued up.

A couple of my chilli plants have started flowering so I've got high hopes, though the leaves on one did manage to get scorched on their first day into the cold frame, it gets blooming hot it there!

Can't wait for them to grow, myself and my boyfriend use loads of chilli and pepper in cooking so these will be fab

TheSpook

Hi everyone.
As a keen chilli fan and grower it was nice to find this thread.
Tomsolomon - the stuff from chilliseeds is excellent - I recently ordered seeds, sauce and paste and can recommend them as a friendly and helpful company to deal with.
My seeds of Naga and Red Habanero have all germinated and I will be potting soon - I'm grow 'em indoors with lights so hope to go all year round now!
The plants I currently have coming into flower (whahey!) are Jalapeno, Pepperone and Heatwave.
I'll upload some piccies of all mentioned when I get the damned camera working again.
PS-anyone tried hydroponics to grow chillies - I'm building a diy system at the moment and would be interested to hear from anyone with experience.
Cheers

Money_saving_Diva_2

I am still WAYYYY over excited at the fact that all 5 of my chilli plants have chillis growing on them, and cos they are the Apatche F1 breed, they are a smallish plant so aren't taking over my window sill. Even the 2 outside have baby chillis on but the ones inside are about an inch long and each plant has at least 2 or 3 with plenty more flowers there.

I check them every day and my partner has to stop me taking photos, he says if I hold all the pictures together and flick them you can see the chillis growing cos I have taken so many!:rotfl:

Oh and the fungus gnats haven't returned so the soil/cinnimon/sand attack obviously worked first time. Yay me!

stormbreaker

Whoo hoo, yesterday we noticed that we have chillies on our plants!!!! Yeh!!
After thinking that they had grown well, had produced a fair amount of flowers but no fruit, we are now over the moon!!!

Money_saving_Diva_2

stormbreaker wrote: »

Whoo hoo, yesterday we noticed that we have chillies on our plants!!!! Yeh!!
After thinking that they had grown well, had produced a fair amount of flowers but no fruit, we are now over the moon!!!

Yay for you storm!! It's so exciting isn't it?

tw88

I would love some much needed advice from all the chilli growers out there..

My problem is that I live in an apartment and only have a balcony which is east facing. Most of the windows are east facing, but I have one north facing. Does this mean that I cannot grow chillis or peppers?

Please tell me what I can do as I love these plants & also love to eat their fruits

tw88

I have just bought the following varieties from my local garden centre:

Cayenne
Thai Dragon
Numex Twilight

Any tips on how to pot, where to position, what compost, what feed to give, etc would be much appreciated!

olly300

tw88 wrote: »

I would love some much needed advice from all the chilli growers out there..

My problem is that I live in an apartment and only have a balcony which is east facing. Most of the windows are east facing, but I have one north facing. Does this mean that I cannot grow chillis or peppers?

Please tell me what I can do as I love these plants & also love to eat their fruits

You need lots of light and warm temperatures to grow both plants.

East facing and north facing windows won't give you the light is so unless you use artificial light then you won't have a decent yield.

I have West and East facing windows and the light disappears from the East facing ones around mid-morning so when I was growing my seeds inside all my seedlings where on West facing windows. One of my friends' who has a North facing back garden has to grow all her food plants in her South facing front garden.

Also it's not worth trying to grow the plants from seed until next February/March as even though the plants are perennials due to UK weather conditions most people treat them like annuals.

Primrose

My best advice is to put all your chilli pots where they will get the best sunlight possible and keep the compost moist. As they like a long growing season, I put compost from Growmore bags in the pots and mix in a few chicken manure pellets to keep the nourishment up throughout the season. They will grow outdoors during the summer but by mid September they really need to be back in a greenhouse or brought indoors. Once you have picked the chillies, you can try pruning them back hard to the lowest leaf shoots and they will often sprout, flower and crop again. But you will need to give the compost regular doses of liquid feed, and if indoor, watch out for whitefly.

olly300

tw88 wrote: »

I have just bought the following varieties from my local garden centre:

Cayenne
Thai Dragon
Numex Twilight

Any tips on how to pot, where to position, what compost, what feed to give, etc would be much appreciated!

Remember it's quite late on in the season. My plants have produced mature fruit so you while you would normally go for the biggest pot possible you probably don't need to.

Mine are planted in multi-purpose compost and because they are fruiting are fed with tomato fertilizer every week.

Place on a sunny window, patio or greenhouse ensuring they get plenty of light. Apparently the hotter the temperature the hotter the chillies.

http://www.chillisgalore.co.uk/pages/growingtips.html

http://www.rhs.org.uk/Advice/profiles0302/chillies.asp