"House" Plants
Funky House Plants
Growing your own chilli peppers
If you love spicy food then you will be familiar with
chillies and there is nothing better fresh ones.
For this section of Jfunk Lab I will be showing you
how to grow your own chillies here in the UK .
What you will need
Chilli seeds ( obvious one )
Now you have your chilli seeds its time to get planting. Chillies need a long growing season to produce a decent crop. In the UK you should be looking at planting in feb / march but you can still get good results later in the year. You can grow them year round using grow lamps.
Chillies can suffer from root shock when you re pot them so using small peat cells can help but it is not essential if you are careful. You will need to fill a small cell seed tray with soil and plant one chilli seed in each cell. To do this - Press down the soil in each cell by about 1cm with your finger to make a little indentation in the soil. Then drop one of your seeds in and cover it over with soil again. I have found about 1/2 to 2/3 of the seeds will produce healthy plants so plant more than you need. You can always give any excess seedlings as presents to green fingered friends.
Now for the exciting part -
After a while you will start to get some chillies sprouting out. When they first pop up they will have two thin leaves then the real chilli leaves will grow up out of the center. At this stage it is time to get them into the light. Remember that they still need to be kept warm so a nice warm windowsill or heated propagator in the greenhouse. When I grow mine I plant them in feb and use a grow lamp for a few hours at night to keep them growing. Grow lamps come in two main varieties 2700k ( red ) and 6400k ( white/blue). I have found that the 6400k lamps are much better to get your chillies growing quickly. Chillies can benefit from anything up to 18 hours of light a day. If you are thinking of using a grow lamps I would advise using a timer to turn them off after a set number of hours as this will save you a bit in electricity. I used a single 125w bulb for two trays of seedlings and it worked nicely.
To keep the soil moist spay the surface ( so as not to disturb the roots ) whenever the soil starts to dry out.
Once the seedlings have their first set of proper leaves it is time to "prick them out" and pot them on to a bigger pot. You will need to go up to around an 8cm pot. I strongly recommend using peat pots for this next stage as it makes it much easier at the next stage.
Fill the pots with soil leaving a whole big enough contain the contence of the cell. If you have used peat cells you can tare them open or just bury the whole cell as the roots will grow through the cell walls. If you have used a small cell plastic seed tray the best thing to do is poke your finger through the whole in the bottom and push out the the soil in one lump. If your seedlings are a bit spindly you can bury them a up as far as the leaves. Chillies can grow routs out of this stems unlike many other plants so this won't harm them.
Chillies are very susceptible to frost so make sure they are not left outside over night until after the last day of frost ( normally the end of march ). Try to keep them warm and give them plenty of light and before you know it you will have a nice healthy batch of chilli plants.
One trick I use is to water around the edges of the pot this means the chillies need to grow lots of long roots to get to the water. I adjust the nozzle on the spray to make a jet of water and that helps get the water deep into the soil around the rim of the pot
When your plants have 6 to 8 leaves it will be time to pot on again. You can grow chillies in pots or if you live in a warmer area then you can plant them outside. Remember the bigger the pot the bigger the plant can grow so if you want a small plant use a small pot and vice versa.
I used peat pots and below are some picks from when I potted them on. Notice even thou the plant is still small the roots have already reached the sides. You can again just burry the pete pot if you want and the roots will grow through as long as you keep the soil on the outside damp.
When you pot them on to the big pots it is worth putting some small stones in the bottom of the pot for drainage.
If you planted in march it should be hot enough to leave the chillies out side by the time they reach this stage but they will still do better in a green house. If you want to leave them outside make sure that the temps stay above 10 degrees over night ( mid to late april ) I check the BBC 24hr weather site for temps in my area.
They will not produce fruit if they don't get enough proper sunlight when they are flowering so keep them out of the shade and water them whenever the surface of the soil is dry.
If you are really brave and want extra hot chillies you can Waite till the leaves start to wilt a little before watering but if you leave it to late they will die so only do that if you keep an eye on them most of the day.
If you want them to be good healthy "house" plants now is a good time to play them some good house music to help them grow big and strong ;-)
Eventually after a few months of growth you should start to get flowers and fruit. Some chillies won't produce fruit if they are not pollinated. If they are indoors where insects will not naturally pollinate them you can do this by gently poking a cotton bud into each of the flowers.
Most chillies start of green and then turn red as they ripen but some turn yellow, purple, orange or brown. If you pick them before they are ripe they will be sweeter and the plant will produce more fruit. If you leave them on the plant to ripen you will get a hotter chillie but may get up to 25% less chillies from your crop.
You can dry chillies for use later in the year if they produce more than you can eat.
You can find anything you need for growing chillies in our amazon powered chillie shop at the bottom of this page. Click here to go back to the Lab
