Hope for better luck with chillies

I'm starting to grow stuff that I can eat and have no experience really. Had some success last year (my first) with tomatoes and leeks and stuff like that.
I tried chillies from small plug plants and a trial few from seed last year and they looked green and lush but piffling produce, about 3 misformed things.
I'm planning for next year and wondering what I've done wrong as don't want to go through all that disappointment again. I did it according to the book so I'm dumbfounded. I thought I'd be clever and grow them in a very sunny sunroom. Was that the problem?

Any ideas.

 

Thanks for that shiney. It's a quite sunny sun room (southish facing) but yes it was a dreary not very sunny summer. From what you say the only thing I didn't do was to increase the pot size with growth. Was a bit lazy and put it in a rather large pot to start with and left it there.

I tried a couple of popular varieties, Habanero and something I can't remember the name of. Sadly I got fed up with them and put them on the compost not realising I could have overwintered them but the sunroom is unheated so could be fatal. Maybe I should just put it down to a bad year.

Perhaps I'll start them indoors and put them outside next year in a sunny sheltered spot. Can someone tell me the variety that is commonly sold in supermarkets, that look and are the size of a fat finger and are medium hot that would suit?

 

Regarding pollination, I've found it to be essential, although I've grown more in the way of sweet peppers over the years rather than chillies.

The old trick of tapping the flowers around mid day appears to work well.

 

Thanks for all the useful info, I will not give up!

 

Hey Fens,

Don't give up I'm a novice as well but this year (after two fairly dismal years) things clicked and all of a sudden we have edible crops that have kept us going for ages now!

On the chilli front this year I tried "Joe's Long" (they all failed to germinate) and"chilli Santa Fe". The failure of the Joe's was down to me, planted seeds too early and neglected them and they just failed to germinate. The Santa Fe's are a mild chilli that went berserk and I now have a load in the freezer and a load just drying in the kitchen. Nice kick but not too strong.

The other great thing about chilli plants is when the chilli's form the plants look amazing. Hence where I live the abundance of chilli plants this year has resulted in trade-ins for a variety of plants from green-fingered neighbours!!

Good luck next year!!

MrM

 

Thanks for that encouragement MrM. From some links provided I was considering buying a seed mix pack and trying from scratch, though I'm not sure I have an adequately constantly warm sunny place to get them germinated at that time of year.

I cook a lot of chillies so it will be worth trying yet again and more options if I do it from seed.

p.s. never heard of freezing them before!

 

Have a look at this thread Fens,

http://gardenerscorner.co.uk/forum/edible-gardening/38645-aubergines.html

I'm a little wary about buying "Mixed" seeds now.

 

Hello Fens
I grew Chillies for the first time last year . I was recommended Cherry Bombs from a chilli site and also Jalapeno . The CB's germinated really easily at 24°c in 8 days , the Jalapenos were difficult took a couple of attempts. The CB's produced fruit in 13 weeks and could be picked in 17 weeks. I got them outside in mid July ,due to miserable weather, potted in 9" pots. The pic shows the CB at 13 weeks next to a dead Jalapeno possibly due to over watering. There will be plenty of Chilli seeds on Ebay after Christmas , I sowed mine late January they do need the longest season possible.

 

Thanks.

Ziggy by mixed I meant one of those collections of five different seed packets rather than a mix in one packet. Lazy way of buying I suppose, typical me, but thanks for the advice, what a strange crop you had .

Harry thanks for the tips and info, one of the types I definitely want to try is Jalapeno (love those home made chilli poppers!). The healthy one in your photo looked like mine did, but mine got no further than that for me this year.

 

Hi Fens, You say you had success with tomatoes, well in short you should grow chillies, bell peppers and even aubergines in pretty much the same way as your tomatoes. Use the same climate, soil and feeds. Vary pot size of course to suit but keep everything else the same.

 

Hi Fens

I managed to grow loads of chillies this year, all from seed (apart from a poorly looking Scotch Bonnet I picked up for 50p in B&Q which gave me > 200 fruits!). One thing I found is that they need to be warm to germinate, 20C or so, and I found a heated propogator tray invaluable for getting germination and early seedling growth. I was growing a mixture of small hot chillies (prarie fire, thai dragon) longer hot chillies (pinoccio's nose, jalapeno) and milder chillies (habanero, anaheim) and they all seemed to grow well.

I'm fortunate enough to have a polytunnel and a small greenhouse so they were in there either in pots of store-bought compost or gro-bags and fed with tomato plant food; they did very well in both. I've now put raised beds in the tunnel so I guess we'll see how they do in those next year.

I'm wondering if the heat helped here, the polytunnel was getting up to well above 30C an most summer days, far hotter than my house, so maybe that might have something to do with the good crop I got.

 

Thanks for the info all and the germination tips. I notice they have a mini germinator as well which I'll look into.

Cheers