Posted by Craig | Posted in allotment, chilli, chillies, wahaca | Posted on 27-03-2011
Tags: chilli, chillies, growing, tips, videos, wahaca
Following on from my video blogs giving tips on how to get your chilli seeds to germinate, and also how to make sure they grow from tiny seedlings into big healthy chilli plants, this video blog explains what to do when your chilli plants starts developing flowers. The flowers are crucial, as they turn into chillies when the flowers have been pollinated.
If your chillies are planted outside then hopefully Mother Nature, with the help of bees and insects will have done the job of pollinating the flowers for you.
However, if your plants are indoors, or in a greenhouse, you will need to give them a helping hand, otherwise those flowers will not develop into chillies.
The first method is rubbing your little finger inside the flower, then doing the same in another flower on the same plant. Alternatively, you can do the same thing with the humble cotton bud. If you watch the video, it will all make sense!
After a while, you will notice that the flowers that have been pollinated will start to turn brown, and eventually drop off. DON’T PANIC! All that is happening here is that a chilli is now starting to push through the flower, and you are well on the way to your first harvest of chillies!
There will be some further chilli related video blogs later on in the year, but if anyone would like to see anything specific relating to chillies, leave a comment below and I will try my best to answer it in a video blog.
In the meantime, happy chilli growing!
Achiltibuie Garden – Hydroponic Growing Kits
Dartmoor Chilli Farm
Greenhouse Sensation
My Chocolate Bhuts and other super hots germinated in under two weeks, yet the prairie fire, Peruvian Purple, Hot Lemon and Ring of Fire haven’t even made an appearance yet. Some have been in for 22 days and some a little less. Anything to worry about or is it just one of those things? Cheers.
@AJ Just be patient, some take longer to germinate than others. It’s just the way it is sometimes
Hi thanks for all your usefull tips so far. a quick question…I have about 3 visible flowers on both my Red Marouga and my apache plants, do i wait until more flowers appear or do I start pollinating now, I grow in a greenhouse. many thanks
Thanks, more tips coming soon! I’d start pollinating now.
Hello, we just randomly planted a whole load of chilli seeds out of a supermarket brought chilli in tiny little pot, and put it on a warm sunny windowsill just to see what happened (a drunken experiment with no forethought or planning).
To our surprise we got seedlings, (about 4), so our friend repotted into a large pot with compost for us. We completely overwatered it, and another 5 seedlings popped up.
The first four continuted to thrive, with the tallest one reaching a massive 7 inches!! It flowered, and they dropped off, (we didnt know we had to pollinate them), and on friday 24th a little green chilli started to grow. It is now 4 inches long, and we have repotted all the plants individually into appropriate sized pots.
We now however are slightly stuck. We have moved from our flat with the lovely warm windowsill and all the plant leaves seem dry and pale and curled up, we are watering them less (following advice from your blog) and we are worried about our plants. Will our baby plants continue to grow and flower? Will our monster plant reflower? Should we cut our chilli? Please help us!! Can our poorly plants be re-juvenated? Thanks, Kelly and Chris
Hi Kelly & Chris,
When you say you have moved from your flat, do the plants have any natural light now?
Also, just to check, when I mention watering on my videos, what I mean is water little and often. The compost should be moist and not saturated. Many people kill their chillies by not watering for ages, and then soaking the plants!
If you want, send me some photos via the “contact us’ page on here, and I’ll see if I can diagnose what’s wrong with your babies
Hi,
They do have access to natural light, but I don’t think its anywhere near as bright or sunny as what they were used to. We completely overwatered them from day one, and I mean really overwatered them, as we sat them in a bowl of water, and let the compost soak it up :S obviously now we now this was a bit of a no-no.
We moved the plants from the flat on Thursday, but due to the moving process I do think they were a bit neglected, but however we didnt think they were too affected due to the growing chilli, although the leaves were starting to curl up and discolour. We seperated them into individual pots the same day, as we figured the monster one was stifling the little ones, as he was growing and growing and the little ones were fairly static.
We decided to leave them outside in the sunniest bit we could find, but on saturday decided to bring the majority in as we didnt think they were doing any better. The monster one is still outside as we cant find a suitable windowsill for him, and I took his chilli away yesterday. I cut the chilli from half way up his stem. Chris says it had a lovely initial fiery kick that eased off quickly
We are now watering just the leafs with a spray bottle. A couple of questions I have are: Is it normal for leaves to drop off? I have lots of stumps on the plant stems. Also do i need to remove the whole chilli stem? I will send some piccys. thanks so much for helping
Hi Craig,
I am currently growing some Bhut Jolokia’s indoors under HID lighting and hydroponics. I’m trying to encourage the plants to keep growing in a vegetative state and develop into a much larger plant before flowering, as to produce a much greater yield. I expect they will be showing early signs of flowering soon which I want to avoid. Is the best way of achieving this to pick off early flowers and/or hold back from too much potassium (K)?
Many thanks, Will
Hi Chris, I planted some Demon Red seeds in May. I have successfully grown 5 to plant stage and all are now bearing a selection of small green pods, perhaps no more than 3/4 cms in length. Given that it is now October do you think that they will mature to red colour ? Also, to store these for long term use, do you think it is best to dry the pods and any advice on drying? By the way, I live in Ireland and I keep the plants indoors in pots on the window sill. Thanks, Carl.