The 2021 Chilli growing season

Isn’t just moist  best ?

Chillies definitely don’t like too much water. Indeed. Giving them more than they need is not good for them at all. To me the soil should be kept as evenly moist as possible. Not too dry nor too wet. I allow the soil to dry out slightly between watering and then give them plenty of water. In other words, a deep watering followed by a drying out period.

On the other hand, Chilli plants do seem to shake off being given too little water very quickly. If  Chilli plants leaves are beginning to wilt, simply give them a good watering. Within a couple of hours, they will be back to normal. It’s almost that they don’t even notice.  It has surprised me no end.  It is amazing how quickly and well Chilli plants recover from not being watered in time.

And thereby lies a tale. The overcast weather that we have recently been experiencing in the last couple of weeks caught me off guard. With an overcast sky and the odd shower, I would have expected that my Chillies were getting enough water.  Apparently not so.

On two occasions now I found that some plants  had dried out. On the first occasion, it was a Scotch bonnet that I had overwintered from last year’s season. Right now, it is laden with Chillies. It is really doing well. I

I reasoned that it had used more water because of all the fruit. Luckily it hadn’t dried out too much. The leaves were limp and wilted, but not badly dry and shrivelled. To rectify this. I immediately gave them a good watering. Within a few hours the plant was looking as healthy as it had previously been.

When doing this I inspected the surfaces of the soil in the pots of my other plants. They all seemed moist. This seemed okay. It’s how I wanted it. As previously mentioned, I do allow the soil to dry out between watering, but only by two to three inches from the surface. I don’t usually allow them to  dry out completely . To  me, that’s pushing it. If you aren’t careful you can lose a plant. In my opinion it’s just not worth the risk

Flower drop

Caught out again

So, it was to my surprise this morning when I went to see my plants. I found that a couple more (Barak Chillis)  had wilted.  This was despite the surfaces of the soil seeming moist just a couple of days ago. I thought the plants had more than enough water when I last checked.  It seems however that I was mistaken.

They too, (as with the Scotch Bonnet) are bearing lots of Chillies.  Could be that it causing this rapid use of water?  This could certainly be the case. Plants do need more water when fruiting. Fruit consist of 90 percent plus water.  Needless to say, they too received a good watering (as did the rest of my Chilies). True to form, the wilted plants soon bounced back

It was while I was doing this that I noticed that Scotch bonnet previously mentioned didn’t have many flowers on it. This got me thinking. Does under-watering cause flower (aka bloom)  drop?

Flower drop is where the plant loses its flowers before they turn into Chillies. I was sure that I read somewhere that it does. Had the Scotch bonnet lost flowers because it had been under watered?

I hadn’t really thought about it at the time.  So, I did some research. Turns out there seems to be mixed views on this. There is plenty of mention that starving Chillies of water makes Chillies more pungent, but not much on flower drop being caused by under-watering. There are many other reasons why flower drop this can happen. It just doesn’t seem that there is a definite view on whether flower drop happens when plants wilt. The jury is thus still out on this one

Finally

It all seems a bit contradictory, doesn’t it?  Allow your Chillies to wilt before watering on one hand and under-watering causes blossom drop on the other. To try and figure this out for myself I will be keeping an eye on the two plants mentioned. I   have taken photographs of what they look like at the moment. Right now, they have plenty of flowers. However, let’s see what they look like in a couple of days. This will be interesting.  I will let you know what the outcome is

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This could be a winner!

In a previous post I mentioned that my Chilli plants didn’t seem as big as I would have expected them to be right now. In view of this I decided to up the ante in the fertilisation stakes. I changed from my normal fertilizer (Chilli Focus) to one higher in nitrogen.  (Vitax V4) The idea behind this was to encourage the plants to grow more quickly. I wanted to accelerate growth.

Guess what? It worked

When I first decided to accelerate growth my tallest plants were in the region of 12 inches (300 mm high). They are now between 16 and 18 inches (400 to 450 mm) tall. That’s not bad for about a month!

While I believe this new fertilization has contributed massively to this new growth, I also must acknowledge that we also had more sunshine during this period. The two together have resulted in these impressive results.

When you are feeding Chilli plants more nitrogen and phosphorus you must be careful. Feed them too much, and you will get big green plants with lots of leaves. Don’t expect many Chillies though. There is a delicate balance. When the plants have reached a reasonable size, the nitrogen needs to be reduced, and the plants should start getting extra potassium to encourage flower formation and fruit set.

Potash (the commonly used term for potassium) also toughens Chilli plants to resist pets and disease. It does this by promoting strong growth. In essence, making the plant stronger so it can fight off these threats to its health.

Based on my experience so far,  it seems we could be on to a winner. Using a fertilizer like Vitax Q4 (which has high nitrogen and phosphorous) during final potting on certainly seems to work well.   The results are impressive

Flower formation

I am fortunate this year on the flower formation front. Many of my Chilli plants now either have buds or are blooming. In fact, two of my plants already have Chillies.   A Barak Chilli plant (that I started from seed) has two Chillies and lots of flowers. The other plant to produce its first Chillies is a Scotch bonnet that I overwintered from last year’s season. This is the second plant I overwintered from last year to produce Chillies.

I believe the flower formation was the result of the higher Potash content of the Vitax 4 fertilizer that I switched to accelerate growth. Vitex 4, not only has a higher nitrogen and phosphorous content than my normal Chilli Focus, but also has a higher potassium level. So, where I would normally only switch to my high potassium fertilizer at this point, these plants already have flowers. They didn’t need the switch over to form flowers and produce Chillies. To further encourage flower formation and fruit set, they will however start getting Champak 4. This is the fertilizer with the potassium levels

Besides my bigger Chili plants (which were potted on for the final time about a month ago) I also have plants that need to be repotted . These plants are now about eight inches tall and will be potted on the for the final time this year. It will be interesting to see if I have the same rapid growth from these plants when they are introduced to Vitax Q4 for the first time.  If it does, it will get my unreserved thumbs up (see note).

Note

This is my own personal unsolicited assessment. It has not been sponsored by the manufacturer in any way at all.

Fertilizing the first buds of the season

A couple of my Thai Demon Chillies that I started from seed  have already reached maturity. They have already started getting buds. Once these buds turn into flowers, with a bit of encouragement, many will turn into Chillies. To facilitate this,I will start fertilizing these Chilli plants with a water-soluble fertilizer that is high in potassium.  Potassium improves flower formation and fruit set.

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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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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

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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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