Chillies 2024

I am about to repot my chilli plants into 6 inch pots. Can they stay there permanently or should I move them on again into bigger pots? In the past in previous houses I have finally potted them on into very large pots and have had a good crop But I thought this year I would try and have smaller bushier plants.

 

THFC, in contrast tomatoes, chilli needs a lot of time to ripe in average 2 months from being green to red. Don’t remove the fruit because chilli have only a limited amount of fruit to produce in contrast to tomatoes which have the ability to have endlessly new sideshoots and flowers. The only thing that stops tomatoes is our temperature and lack of sunlight.
I always grow the red one from the supermarket, hot 2, nothing special. This is my timeline:
25 January: sowing seeds, pots are on the window south.
7 to 10 days later: germination has started. The day is 1 hour longer than Winter solstice.
Mid March: potting into a bigger pot
Mid April: potting into final pot, first flowers appear, manual pollination
Mid May: move to greenhouse
Mid June: plants have developed many fruits and the first ones start to turn reddish.
Mid July: first chilli ripped to be harvested.

 

Moved my three surviving overwintered chilli's outside. They can stay there now unless we have a cold snap, being much more robust than this years freshly sown ones. Plus two of them are locotos which prefer it cooler anyway

 

Dammit. Amateur mistake then!
Thanks for all the info.
I will leave them alone for now then. Hopefully I haven't lost too many chillies!

 

Don't worry @THFC. Plenty of time for chillies to formand grow.

Once they start producing mature fruits the important thing is to remove them as they ripen or they'll inhibit newer chillies from growing and ripening. They should then keep producing till the frosts come.

 

Ok, good to know. Thank you - will do that.
Quite exciting to see how they do.

 

@THFC Mistakes follow me in my garden year by year .

I can only speak for that kind of chilli. My seeds came from a Waitrose one but I think they are all the same. I only noticed that the batch was a bit hotter than the ones from M&S and Sainsbury's.
The plants don't grow that high and they produce approx 20 to 30 flowers and have reached their limit. It might be that your ones can overwinter and produce endlessly flowers as Hunglow's. I had grown once Cayenne chillies but they were too hot for me. That Cayenne plants had hundreds of chillies (I gave half of them to my neighbour and used the other half as green chillies).
You will enjoy your first chillies.
Just a tip: If you like your ones hotter, leaves them longer on the stem and don't overwater them. I give my ones once a week a soak.

 

Gosh Penny you must cook some seriously HOT dishes just as my OH likes ! Me I'm slightly milder ,not bought our chilly plants yet last years didn't survive in the Greenhouse over the Winter in fact had loads of flowers on them but they didn't turn into chillies. So start again !will buy a few soon from a local grower at Abergavenny market once we start clearing all this years seedli out to make room for our Tomatoes which are shooting up

 

simone_in_wiltshire,

The chillies you bought from Waitrose look to be Serenade. I bought some a couple of years ago when the packet was actually labelled. I also extract the seeds from bought fruit (Sweet Peppers and Chillies).

Ademission

 

Hello peoples,

Another update from the greenhouse.


Various Sweet Peppers


Aji Lemon (Lemon Drop)


Jalapeno (Large)


Small sweet peppers fruits


More early fruit

One advantage of growing hydroponically is that we only need to water every week or so. Holidays are no problem.

Ademission

 

That are many @Ademission. Do you eat them all?

 

simone_in_wiltshire,

We do eat a lot of food containing chillies. Our favourites are Poppers (Jalapenos filled with cheese and wrapped in bacon) hence the 8 Jalapeno plants. We cook Chilli-con-carne often and even when we cook Spaghetti Bolognese, we throw in a chilli. Other things we do is dehydrate them and grind them up into flakes for use as a condiment.

The Aji Lemon chillies are a new variety for us so we will have to see how they go as we have no experience with these yet.

The Sweet Peppers are eaten fresh from the plants or vacuum packed and frozen and last us all year.

Ademission

 

Thank you very much for the Serenade name, @Ademission
I just checked the specs. Wow, dozens of peppers and 36inch high. That is almost a meter high. I will need bigger pots for my 3 plants. Good to know. Muchas gracias :-)

 

@Ademission I have grown Lemon Drop from seed the last 3 years but they haven't germinated this year. I might try again but use seed I saved from last year's crop.

We really like the flavour and they're very productive so I still have some from last season, chopped and frozen in ice cube trays as well as flavouring olive oil.

 

Obelix-Vendee,

Thanks for the information on the Lemon Drop chillies. I'm looking forward to trying them. I normally grow Cayenne and Birds Eye chillies for culinary use but I still have a good supply of frozen ones so I chose to try a different variety and the Lemon Drop got the most recommendations.

We still have some of last year's Sweet Peppers in the freezer but although they are good for cooking with, you can't beat the freshly harvested, crispy peppers for dips and flavour. This year we are growing 4 varieties (2 plants of each type)......
Corno de Torro - Red
Romana
King of the North
California Wonder - Red

Ademission