Chilli grower advice.

[markm]

I have a chilli plant (vampire). It grew like fury (as well as the chillis) but it seems to have hit a period of no movement. The plant is healthy and loads of chillis on it, but they are not growing. I've used tomato plant food for the last couple of weeks as per the instructions on the bottle.

 

1. Should I increase the strength of the feed?

2. Should I remove any chillis off it? There are a few growing in what I would call clusters (multiple chillis on one stem, look a bit like a black flower).

 

Photos below show the plant and one chilli, it's been the same size and colour for nearly 3 weeks.

 

 

http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z197/markmather/2F1B6C6F-FA3D-45B6-AA89-B0B9692B48A3_zpsthrxqqjc.jpg

Edited August 23, 2017 by markm

[ShootingEgg]

Dont water them in the evenings I think after 5 pm, they dont like being too wet. I tend to just leave the plant to do its thing. The weather this year isnt helping even if the plant is in a window sil or greenhouse.

[steve d]

Tomato food isnt the best for chillis, try and get some Chilli Focus, its mustard. If you do stick with the tomato food, feed at half strength every watering, not weekly. Also as has been stated above, chillis grow better(and hotter) if they are always on the dry side. I dont water mine until the leaves are drooping. What size pot are they in? Mine are in bottomless 12L flower buckets in the polytunnel, if theyre in small pots they get rootbound and cant take up the nutrients of the feed so easily.

[sako751sg]

Ive loads in the greenhoose but the weather is playing havoc with the chili i think.We are lucky if getting any sun every 3 days and the plants are dripping in flowers but lacking fruit although the early ones have produced but then stalled agin.

Toms are doing superb with a heavy crop although taking an age to ripen.

[derbyduck]

iv'e picked about a dozen of 3 plants so far and pulled my first toms tonight ,not been a good year so far ,iv'e done better outside with Toms the ones in the green house seem lacking plus they got infested with catapilars that munched into the green fruits

[ShootingEgg]

Peppers, chill and toms all suffering this year, cucumbers coming out my.......

 

Sweetcorn outside done well though

[Oldgun]

My chili's are just right now,had come banana one's not very hot and good croppers,

at the moment my scotch bonnet and jalapeno are fantastic but taken a while to crop.

As for toms hear again taken time to ripen,tried some RAF toms (Spanish) fantastic

would recommend you give them a try.Everything has come at once am now North Norfolk's

leading tomato supplier,nobody wants the chili's i think they might freeze will give it a bash.

Looks like i have over watered my chili's according to previous posts,so have learned something

for next year

[AYA Annihilator]

Aye Mark M remove the chillies if they're ripe - if they're almost ripe, put them in a paper or bag with a banana in a cupboard and they will ripen (this really works). As Steve D said chilli focus is the thing to have. Don't need a huge amount but certainly a bit more than they suggest (10ml per liter of the top of my head).

 

I have some birds eye chilli plants which have loads of fruit but they too seem to have hit a period of no growth, that's fine. They should ripen eventually.

 

Just leave them too it and don't overwater them.

[yates]

My chili's are just right now,had come banana one's not very hot and good croppers,

at the moment my scotch bonnet and jalapeno are fantastic but taken a while to crop.

As for toms hear again taken time to ripen,tried some RAF toms (Spanish) fantastic

would recommend you give them a try.Everything has come at once am now North Norfolk's

leading tomato supplier,nobody wants the chili's i think they might freeze will give it a bash.

Looks like i have over watered my chili's according to previous posts,so have learned something

for next year

Don't freeze your chilli's. Pick them and and allow them to dry. I'm still using mine from over a year ago.

My chili's are just right now,had come banana one's not very hot and good croppers,

at the moment my scotch bonnet and jalapeno are fantastic but taken a while to crop.

As for toms hear again taken time to ripen,tried some RAF toms (Spanish) fantastic

would recommend you give them a try.Everything has come at once am now North Norfolk's

leading tomato supplier,nobody wants the chili's i think they might freeze will give it a bash.

Looks like i have over watered my chili's according to previous posts,so have learned something

for next year

Don't freeze your chilli's. Pick them and and allow them to dry. I'm still using mine from over a year ago.

[39TDS]

I have never frozen chillies so wouldn't know but my uncle was telling me today how he had such a big crop one year he had to freeze them and they were still using them 5 years later.

 

Similar to above posts I have two plants that are growing very well and have a lot of flowers but not setting. Just started to set a few this last week or so.

[yod dropper]

I knocked up some superb chilli jam last year. I dried the rest.

[GingerCat]

I've frozen chillies and am doing so again this year. If u take them from the freezer and chop em up before adding straight to the pan I notice no difference from fresh.

[Mungler]

I have a ridiculous amount this year and have bought a load of these >baby food freezer pots<:

 

I had some tomatoes that had split when ripening (enough to fill a litre jug) and so I blended them with 2 jumbo hot chillis, some ketchup, a desert spoon of salt and sugar and some white wine vinegar to make what I can only describe as a Nando's hot sauce but on heat.

 

I used half of the mix marinating and dousing on some grilled chicken (the cooking process took a fair lump of the heat away, which was a good thing) and the rest I froze in those plastic pot pod things.

 

The best plan for the chilli harvest I heard was to make chill paste and fill ice cube trays with the mixture - that way, when you are cooking you need only pop out a single chilli cube and hey presto fresh chilli.

 

My biggest problem is that I completely lost track of what plants were planted where.

 

I think I can work out 60% of what I have grown and must now try a process of elimination - I'll get some photos up and we can have a competition.....