Chillies perennial/evergreen?

Hi everyone

Last Autumn when we were sorting out our greenhouse Mrs shiney decided to bring three of our 'Tabasco' chilli plants into the utility room to see if the baby chillies on them would mature. There were a few green ones that were about a quarter of an inch long. They did turn red so that experiment worked.

The plants are still in the utility room, by a window, and the leaves are still on them. I did check to see that the leaves hadn't just dried up and stayed there. The leaves seem quite healthy and there are now quite a lot of new, tiny, leaves growing.

Does anyone know if these plants are really evergreen and perrenial as they appear to be? If so should I be repotting them now? They are in 6 inch pots and the plants stand about 18 inches above the soil.

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shiney

 

Thanks Blackthorn
Mrs shiney says that she will repot them and will prune them to make them bush out more - unless we hear otherwise.

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shiney

 

Hi LoL, my young friend. Sorry your chillies don't survive. These were brought indoors and just dumped in the utility room. They even went without water for over five weeks whilst we were away. The old leaves may drop off once the new ones grow more - watch this space :D :D

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shiney

 

Here are a couple of photos of them, taken today - not pruned yet. I hope they grow well. The chillies were HOT!!!!! The small chillies still on the plant were last season's and are dried up.







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shiney

 

Hi FANCY, we both love chillies and usually prefer them fresh and raw - although deep fried are good as well. I eat them with English food (roast beef, steak etc.) as well as food from other countries.

Hi dalbuie, these were left by sheer chance so it will be a good experiment. We shall prune them carefully and repot them. There are dozens of new leaves coming through now.
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Gardening Rule: When weeding, the best way to make sure you are removing a weed and not a valuable plant is to pull on it. If it comes out of the ground easily, it is a valuable plant.
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shiney

 

CHILLI UPDATE

In February I took photos of three of my plants that had survived the winter in our utility room (two pictured below) and thought that I would experiment by seeing how they did during through 2007.




They were lightly pruned and moved into the greenhouse in April and started to flower earlier than usual. Since then we have picked over 200 chillies from the three plants.

I moved the plants out of the greenhouse two weeks ago when the first frosts came and put them into the lounge. They are still fruiting and flowering and here is a photo of one of them that I took yesterday.




They are doing brilliantly and have just started to sprout new growth (about two inches on each stem) with lovely new leaves. The down-side is that the new growth is getting greenfly. :eek:

Any ideas on the best way to get rid of the greenfly without using chemicals?

Thanks

 

Thanks LoL, I'll give it a go.