Chilli heads.

I made chilli sauce yesterday... Green chillies, garlic, onion and coriander in one and red chillies, garlic, ginger and onion in the other... Tasty, not too hot... Were very good on tacos last night...

1 Attachment

Anyone have any tried and tested home remedies for aphids? They are going wild for any chilli plants in the windowsill.

Shotgun

Might work better than fire

Better do both to be on the safe side.

I sowed my first batch of chillies today. Thanks to those who chilli circle :)

Chocolate Habanero
Early Jalapeño
Palivec
Cherry bomb
Ancho
4 x mystery varieties...

3 Attachments

Wahaca are giving away free seeds in a little folded card . Corn exchange manchester had them on the inside tables.

sowed my first batch of chillies today

looking professional!

godspeed!

I sowed my first ones too. Just some Cayenne that I had a packet of from last year.

Mine are on a window sill, not in a megagrowfakesunfridge.

#fail

Hopefully you’ll be okay. OH and I diverge on opinion of what kitchen windowsill should be used for, and I had poor germination last year even in a heated propogator in the conservatory... so sunfridge was born.

Actually I built it for brewing but it has been so useful for all kindsa stuff. It can hold anywhere from 0 to 50 degC ... just imagine the possibilities!

making a new batch of chilli oil. 6 whole scotch bonnets chopped and added to oil, brought it up to sizzling, let it bubble away gently for 10 mins, then cool and bottle. Added 3 desseeded scotch bonnets. will give it a taste tonight.

4 Attachments

Sowed this years batch. Seeds are two years old though.

Fingers crossed they germinate or it'll be another late sow on a week or two.

Sowed this years batch

Just out of curiosity - are you people who are sowing this early in the year all using artificial light?
Or what do you do to keep the little plants from becoming leggy (assuming you live in the UK, where it's basically still winter)??

I was going to sow this weekend but might hold off as mine are usually leggy when I plant this time of year.

The plan is to get one of these. (Other retailers are available...)

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Replacement-Adjusting-Gooseneck-Hydroponic-Greenhouse/dp/B07G4B8N2D/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1549735510&sr=8-4&keywords=relassy

Ah ok.
If you have the space (daylight) neon tubes might give you more bang for the buck.
Word of advice though - do the mathe beforehand (I was quite surprised by my electricity bill that one winter I had those running 14 hours a day for 2-3 months - plants were nice and compact though!)

Do you mean fluorescent? LED technology has overtaken those as grow lights now, these only consume 15W.

Last year I sowed them in a deep root trainer let them get to about 15cm then potted them up, they remained small with lots of fruit. I ended up with so many dried and in the freezer, so I made hot sauce and roasted chilli and tomato ketchup with the tomates I grew (I've just run out of pizza sauce) it's totally delicious, and will probably have enough for the next 2 years.

What I gathered from a chili nerd forum that winter is that the proper LED lamps (that deliver a suitable spectrum) are quite pricey, so initial outlay is very high for good lamps.
Thus most smaller operations are using tubes which will give even light to a lot of seedlings / small plants (think two or three mounted parallel, 20 cm apart).
Of course if you're just doing one or two plants this makes no sense but I went pretty gung-ho that one winter (and the following summer totally sucked, haha, so a lot of effort and money for nothing)

Don't they sell lamps at IKEA for this?

We had a look at the spectrum output for those and determined they were shit compared to our proper tube lamps.

These are just to help them to grow during the months of no sunlight. Once summer arrives they will be switched off.

I have to fuck around at work with fluorescent tube lighting (I'm a sparky) and I'm not dicking around with them at home.

Like I said LED lighting is making leaps and bounds. I'd don't spec tube lamps anymore, it's cheaper to go for LED.

Yeah.

In my case they were in a room I don't spend much time in so I'm actually not bothered by the light when I need to go to bed early - so didn't mind the neon lights (also they're really close to the plants and have reflective shielding around so as much of the light reaches them) but sure I do get your point.

I am going to try without extra light this year. That’s why I didn’t sow on New Years Day (have before) ... waited a month, and once they’ve germinated they’ll be on a bright windowsill, conservatory, then polytunnel. I reckon they’ll be alreet.

All you guys already starting make me think I should as well.

Yet I had really leggy plants when starting early (without artificial lights, window facing east).
When I started early with lights for 2-3 months plants developed really well, healthy and bushy - yet the thing is you have to move them so they face south, plus need a good summer to really reap the benefits.
In other words in my experience when the summer is shit, and / or plants are not really in the sun the whole day you don't really need to bother with pushing things early in the year so much, as you'll just end up with a couple of fruit anyway.

You can give the plants an early start and they will be bigger sooner - and thus will flower more, but to bear actual fruit they need a lot of energy, so they will drop blossoms if there's not enough light then.
And for the berries to become really hot you just need shitloads of sun anyways
: ]