Author: CGS

How to make Chillies grow faster

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How to make Chillies grow faster

How to get rapid growth

Unfortunately, there has not been much sunlight up to now this season.  This has resulted in my Chillies being smaller than I would want them to be. To get a decent harvest  I will need to find a way to make my Chilli plants  grow faster. How do I do this?

They have been hardened off (acclimatized) to outside conditions. Some have now reached the size they are ready for their final  potting  on  . The Chillies will finish the season in these pots. How I handle this step may make all the difference.

There is not much I can do about the lack of sunlight. What I can do though is look into other ways of encouraging growth. I want to determine whether fertilizing them differently will have any significant impact. It is certainly worth a try. There is nothing to lose.

Up to now, my seedlings have been fertilized with 5ml of Chilli Focus to every litre of water. They get fertilized in this way at every second watering. . Usually I fertilize at this dosage until the first sign of flowers. After that, the dosage is then doubled to 10 ml per litre of water.

I usually work on the basis that if something is working, don’t it fix?  Usually I would have only used Chilli Focus, fish blood powder and chicken manure pellets for fertilisation. However, these are not normal circumstances. Drastic measures are being called for. I am now after rapid growth.  Something else needs to be tried.

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Hardening plants off

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Hardening Chilli plants

Right now, in this Chilli growing season, I believe I should be further down the line. In previous seasons, I would have already completed hardening my chilli plants off . by now. They would already have been prepared for exposure to outside conditions. Most would be permanently outdoors. Not so, this year!

I am not entirely sure why, but I am starting to get the feeling this year that my Chillies seem a bit smaller than on average. So far this season, we have not had a lot of sunshine in the United Kingdom. I suspect this may have impacted how well the Chillies are doing.

My tallest plants, the Longhorn F1s, Satan’s Kisses, Numexs and a Purple Tiger, are between five and eight inches.  I started these from seed at the beginning of March.  Many of my other plants, however, including Scotch bonnets, Prairie fires, Habaneros, Baraks and African Devils, are only still between two and five inches tall. Many of these were started at the same time as the tallest plants.

In addition, I did a second round of seed starting about two weeks later. The cultivars started were much the same as those mentioned above. I accept that some plants are bound to be smaller if they were started later. This is  only to be expected. After all, seedlings need a certain time to grow.

I also acknowledge that slower-growing varieties like Habaneros and Scotch Bonnets will take longer to develop into mature plants.  (Hotter varieties  like these can take over a hundred days from potting on to reaching maturity).  This is why it is  important to start a growing season early with these varieties. Start too late and they will need to be overwintered.

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How to identify Chilli plants

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Identifying Chilli plants

How to identify Chilli plants

In my previous post I mentioned that I had already had my first Chilllies from a plant that I overwintered from last year.   Because this plant was still indoors when its first flowers appeared, I did some self-pollination (the chances were slim that the bees would do it indoors). I did the pollination  with a soft watercolour paint brush by transferring pollen from one flower to the others.  I was thrilled when a couple of weeks later I was rewarded with my first couple of Chillies of the season.

But I had a problem. I had no idea what type of Chilli this is. Out of pure curiosity , I decided that I wanted to try to identify it Read more

First Chillies after self pollination

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First Chillies after self pollination

Self pollination of Chilli plants

As mentioned in my previous post, the first flowers for this years Chilli growing season have arrived . These are  on a plant that I overwintered from last year.  There is little chance of these flowers being pollinated indoors, so I self pollinated the Chilli plant. It took  a couple of weeks, but my first Chilllies of the season duly  arrived.

Self pollination of Chilli plants is not difficult. All that is required is to lightly rub a soft watercolour paint brush over the stamen of one flower and then gently dab it into the inside of another. In doing so pollen will be  lifted from the stem of the first flower, and then transferred to the Pistal  of the other.  This results in the flower becoming fertilized

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First flowers of the season

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First flowers of the season
Blooming good start

This Chilli growing season has now really taken off with the first flowers of the season. I expect to make my first harvest of Chillies in about four  weeks from an overwintered plant.

The main benefit of overwintering Chilli plants is that they have a considerable advantage when it comes to producing fruit. I overwintered three plants from last year. With the arrival of spring, these guys jumped back into life. Leaves started shooting out from previously bare stems and cut back branches. These plants are now getting quite bushy. I have been happy with their progress.  Its become even better than that now , with the arrival of the  first flowers of the season. Read more

Removing netting from peat pellets?

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removing netting from peat pellets

Is this really necessary ?

There is a lot of debate about this.   Some say that not removing the netting from peat pellets  when potting on is necessary. Others disagree. Those for removing the netting say that not removing it impedes the seedlings’  growth. The theory seems to be that netting curtails the formation of the root ball. I am not convinced  about that Read more

All about peat pots for growing Chillies

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Fibre versus peat pots

Talking  seedling pots. This season I learned something  I never knew in all the years I have been growing Chillies.   It would seem that not all” peat” pots are the same. They might  look the same, and, in certain instances, carry the same name, but they are not !

This lesson was something I wish I had known about earlier. Much to my dismay, it cost me five of my seedlings. It was a lesson learned too late.

There is a difference

Let me explain. Over and above the pots, I mentioned in my last post ,I also have some seedlings in even smaller ones (about two inches by two inches).  I noticed that these smaller pots weren’t behaving in the way  I am used to. Read more

How tall should my Chilli plants be?

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How tall should my Chilli plant be at this point the season

So where are we?

This is a question we all get to at some point in growing Chillies . To gauge how well your seedlings are doing, you might well want to ask how tall your Chilli plants  should be by now. There is no hard and fast rule but making a comparison with other Chilli growers may help

My Chillies are doing  reasonably well. Some are already going on two to  three inches high, which is a reasonable height for them to be right now. Soon, the “same size as pot rule “will apply.   Simply put, when my plants grow to the same height as the pot they are in, they get potted on.  In this way, the root ball  that has formed will have the freedom to grow bigger. This, in turn, will allow the plant to grow and get closer to the all-important fruit-bearing stage Read more

Nematodes and Aphids

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Nematodes and Aphids
My first go at Nematodes

And here we go again, the endless battle with bugs in Chilli growing begins already. No sooner had I  taken  steps to controlling fungus gnats with nematodes than the first signs of aphids appeared.  Never a dull moment!

Dosing my seedlings  with nematodes  had its moments .  it was only on reading the instructions, I learned that when applying nematodes, you have to use the whole pack in one go. I was a bit concerned because I realised that I had bought far too much. The package I had claimed it could  treat 15 m2 of fertiliser, Read more

Potting on seedlings

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Developing the root ball

Potting on in various stages in a plant’s growth is extremely important. If you want healthy, Chillies allow a mass of roots to fill its pot.  Then gradually transplant into bigger pots to develop the Chilli plants root ball. This will ultimately lead to a plant, which can keep itself well nourished.

The first potting on normally happens when the seedings are pricked out of their starting medium. and potted on into pots. This year, of course, I have far too many to do this.  Instead, I will keep the seedlings as they are and transplant them intact in the pellets directly into pots. I will let them grow for a couple of weeks, and then thin them out. Only the strongest will remain. The less robust specimens will (sadly) have their stems snipped off at the base

The pots I will use for this are compostable peat pots about 2 inches wide and three inches high.  To get the repotting started, I will mix   John Innes compost number one with vermiculite in a ratio of two parts to one. The pots will then be filled to about a third full of this mixture.  A peat pellet (with seedlings) will be placed on top of this (see note).  The pellets will then be covered with compost, with the seedling’s stems sticking out above the surface. There is no need to be too precise about this. Chillies don’t mind their stems being buried deeply, but as a general rule, I try to have at least an inch (25 mm) of the stem sticking out above the compost.

These peat pots will be placed in a seedling tray on top of some capillary matting. I will then mix Chilli Focus (or a similar fertilizer) with water at the rate of 2.5 ml per litre of water, and wet the capillary matting until it is drenched. As soon as I do this, the peat pots will start sucking water from the matting through capillary action. This will ensure that the roots get enough water and nutrients for the seedling to grow.

It is always best to water seedlings in this way. If you water them from the top, there is a good chance that fungus gnats will arrive and start laying their eggs into the soil. Fungus gnats love wet surface soil, especially in seedling trays. Once the fungus gnat’s eggs hatch, the resultant larvae pose a threat to seedling root health.

The newly potted seedlings have now seen the last of the grow lights and will be placed on a sunny window sill indoors for them to progress in their growth.

This year, as a method of controlling the fungus gnats thoroughly, I will experiment with nematodes.  Dosing plants with nematodes  is a biological method of controlling these nasty little creatures. My next post will detail how I will do this.

Note. Some growers prefer cutting the netting  of the pellet away before doing this. I still have an open mind about this