THE CHILLIES THREAD 2018

We've had a lot of trouble with aphids this year and have had thousands of them. I been regularly rubbing them of the plants, and rinsing them. We tried spraying with diluted Fairy but it seemed to burn the leaves. So have gone back to rubbing and washing. The infestation has become a lot less as the flowers and fruit have formed.

The Nagas that we overwintered have only produced very small leaves and not many of them, but are already producing flowers. This is quite good as they are a notorious slow mover early in the year.

Our Shiney Hybrids are doing well - apart from the aphids. As we've run out of space in the greenhouse we have been bringing some of them in to the kitchen at night and hardening them off outside during the day. We have about forty in the kitchen at the moment and all the rest are in the greenhouse. We'll sell a lot of them at the weekend.

These are the ones in the kitchen (photos a bit fuzzy as they are taken at night in poor lighting.



They're now producing masses of flower and some of the fruit are almost their full size - they only grow half an inch to an inch and a bit.

 

The Chillies are coming on well. Hopefully in another couple of weeks some of these will be ready for picking


Nagas will be a lot longer. Can't see them being ready for sale for at least a month.


Aphid problem all gone now. No chemicals used, just hand rubbing them and letting them grow strong enough to resist the bugs.

 

This afternoon I potted on 45 chilli plants into what I think will be their final pots. Still another 15 that aren't ready to pot on (no roots showing out the bottom of the pots).

 

I was wrong! Some of them have really taken to this hot weather and needed potting on further.

I've been eating ripe ShineyHybrids for a couple of weeks now. Not quite as hot as they will become later in the season.

 

Hi @cheryl felix ,

Yes, it's simply that you didn't start them off early enough but they will eventually fruit for you . This may take until late summer.

We usually sow them the second week in February but we started them off the last week in January as we were gallivanting off to Rajastan in Feb. Ate some hot chillies there

We find the best way to propagate them is to put the seeds on a dampened piece of kitchen paper. We put this into a seed sprouter but you can Justas easily put the kitchen paper into a plastic container and cover with a plastic bag. Depending on the variety they can germinate in anything from 4 days to three weeks. If they are one of the varieties that take a week or more then just make sure that the paper is damp - not wet.

You only need to keep them in a warm room (not a cold greenhouse) and once they have grown to an inch or an inch and a half you can transplant them (very carefully) into a small pot with good potting compost. Still put the plastic bag over the top and it will act like a mini greenhouse and keep the humidity up. We keep ours in the kitchen.

As they grow you can start potting them on into slightly larger pots. You'll know when they're ready to pot on as you should be able to see the roots start to poke out of the bottom of the pot.

We only, now, grow two varieties. One is our own Hybrid and the other is the Naga (hot, hot, hot!) chilli. We've bred our hybrids to be quite hot with a nice fresh taste and not to grow too big. They produce loads of small chillies right through to the new year.

These are some of our hybrids (photos just taken) and they come in two versions. One is a short fat chilli and the other is a thinner, slightly longer, chilli.







We sell our chillies for charity and had over 100 of them (we still have about fifty plants left - although some of them have been ordered).

This is some of the Hybrids and the taller ones are Nagas. The Nagas can grow up to 3ft high whereas the Hybrids only grow about 12" - or less.



The Nagas are all ordered, by the local Bangladeshi community, and are a completely different style of chilli.