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Hi,
I am interested in growing my own hot chillies but I think that it is now too late to start from seed. I have seen an interesting website offering a range of small chilli plants http://www.annavalleychillies.co.uk but have no experience of buying plants or growing them.
Anybody have any help?

Thanks

A couple of years ago I grew maybe 25 hot chili plants in garden centre compost. The containers were the sort of black plastc "buckets" in which cut flowers are displayed. The plants were outdoor grown, no protection. They were fed a liquid based fertilizer. I grew enough in that summer to last 3?4? years. (Preserved in sherry, in jam jars.) I got the seeds from the UK arm of Kokopelli. I don't know whether they are still in business. I also ristad some.

My packet of seeds says sow Feb to April so you should still be OK! At least I hope so as I have yet to plant mine...

Dave

I haven't seen Wilf in a while, but he's a forum member with a small business in hot peppers, seeds, and products. You might be able to contact him for advice. His website is here:
http://www.chillisgalore.co.uk/

I grew Habenaroes once, in a two year process. Pepperes are perrenials and will over winter if you take them in as a house plant for the winter. The first year I grew some plants in the garden. Nice plants but no fruit. In the fall I dug up one plant and put it in a 2 gallon pot, I brought it in the house and kept it all winter. In the spring I put it out in my green house and it lost most of its leaves, but grew new ones. I kept it the green house and it was a hot summer. It produced loads of peppers but they were too hot to use. I made a batch of rice and used 1 pepper and its seeds. It was too hot to eat! and I can handle hot stuff.

Big Guy's right, we think of chilli plants as annuals but in reality if they're handled right they can keep going for years and the best results are more often seen AFTER the first year.

So digging up the ones I had, that produced no chillies last year, and putting them on the compost heap, probably wasn't too clever then...

Oh well we live and learn

Dave

I have one Arbol chili plant (now a tree), one orange habanero and one red habanaro all survived this winter here outdoors in sheltered locations, as did a tomato plant.
I uncovered the red habanero 2 weeks ago to find 2 big habaneros on it, the orange one has put out a crop of small chilies while the arbol is sort of dead from the neck up but sprouting new lower branches with small chllies forming on them.

Our winters here are not persistently cold like in UK, but does get below freezing some nights. These plants will tolerate cold weather as long as you keep them away from frost. You could probably keep them in UK indoors or in a greenhouse over the winter, although lack of sunlight would not likely permit fruit to develop during this time.

have just ordered 6 diffrent plants from //.annavalleychillies.co.uk/ good choice at a fair price but my questions are
1 can they all be kept ok on windowsill 2 what about polernation
her indoors will go ape if i let the insects in

I doubt that a window sill will give enough light for producing fruit, It should be enough to keep the plant alive over the winter then set the plant outside once the threat of frost is gone, and take it back inside in the fall before frosts. You should be able to keep them alive and producing for years. peppers are self polinating so no insects required.

hotgoblin wrote:have just ordered 6 diffrent plants from //.annavalleychillies.co.uk/ good choice at a fair price but my questions are
1 can they all be kept ok on windowsill 2 what about polernation
her indoors will go ape if i let the insects in

I had a small chilli plant on a North facing window sill and that flowered and produced peppers almost constantly, they were far too hot to eat, but made for a nice feature in the kitchen. I have friends who also grow chillis on a south facing window sill in the kitchen and this thing is more like a tree, and has grown almost 4ft tall and perhaps 2ft across.

Are peppers similar in the possibility of keeping, I had a pepper plant last year which did nothing, so I binned it in the autumn thinking that was it spent.

Did the same with my last lot of chillis and peppers straight in compast bin .At least they were recycled
Have large southfacing room so will try some there and some outside and see what happens ?

I've got some jalapenos growing, seem to be moving alot slower than the cherry tomatoes though! hopefully i'll get something from them, i cant seem to buy fresh jalapenos in any supermarkets in the UK!

Big Guy; great tip about these little fellers being perennial; thanks, buddy, I had no idea.
I've grown these from seed each year for a few years now:
http://www.thompson-morgan.com/seeds1/p ... 817/1.html
They're hot, but not lethal. They dry really well on a windowsill or you can string'em together and hang them in a sunny window, then jar them up and you've got a year's supply. (Fox's Spices have some fantastic dried Mexican chillies too). One year my toms suffered some foul blight, and they passed it on to the chillies, though.
That said, I left it too late this year so I bought a couple of jalapeno plants in the garden centre. I'll keep 'em growing in pots this year and overwinter them inside as per Big Guy's tip.

Beardedwonder5: I like the sound of preserving them in sherry; do you have a recipe for this? I'd like to try it with some milder chilli varieties. Any other tips for preserving a chilli glut aside from drying? I aim to smoke some, too, if I get a decent crop.

some Serrentos, Jalapenos and about 4 types of scotch bonnet.
Can't wait to get cracking and grow them as Japanese generally have an aversion to spicy food so you can't find them in the supermarket.