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Hi all,
My 4 chilli plants in indivudual small pots are around 8 inches tall now. Can I transplant all 4 into a 10 inch wide pot? or do they have to transplanted and potted up individually. Also has anyone planted chilli plants on allotment?

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cheers Reks

I am not sure that a 10" pot would be big enough for 4.
But I'm only going by my hot cayennes which are in 7" pots and still growing - the tallest one, on the right, is now 3' tall measured from the seed leaves.



What kind are yours anyway?

In any case it would be much better to gradually increase the pot size by a couple of inches diameter each time you pot on, until you reach the final pot size. I went from 3" to 5" to 7".

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Hi onefivenine mine are also hot Cayennes. See attached pics. Your looks lovely.

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cheers Reks

I've got chilli envy...

I plant mine on the lotty. They crop better than the ones on my patio ... no downsides that I can think of (they do really well)

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Cheers Reks

Where are your pics - I'll check em out.



I have a plant from the same seedling batch growing outdoors, and it's only a foot tall and just now getting some flower buds.
It looks OK I think, healthy enough, just not quite as masjestic as the indoor ones. It's got annoying curved/spiral leaves due to pests but I think it's going to crop well.

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sorry...here are the pics

Attached Thumbnails

 

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cheers Reks

They look nice and healthy! When did you sow them?

The wee one at the front could use a bit of support I reckon!

I pot mine on with the compost right up to the seed leaves.
To be honest I wouldn't increase the pot size by much potting those on, just another inch or two at most, but plant them in deeper, up to the seed leaves.

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Will that not rot the stem 159? My chillies are nowhere near that size so I must be doing something wrong!

I think mine were sown end of Apr. Yes one of them has a twisted stem. I have kept aside some yoghurt pots to transplant them , so will be deep and yes will plant them deep.

Florence Fennel - chillip plant grows roots from the stem just like tomatoes, so plating them deep is a good idea especially when they r growing tall. Mine were indoors up utill last 2 weeks and then I moved them out as the weather got warm. Next week looks like night temp is arnd 13-14 degrees where I live, so not sure if I should bring them in. But the fact that Two_sheds has planted these on lottie means I could leave them outside in my open green house.

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cheers Reks

My chillies did mucjh better in my open greenhouse last year than they did in the house the year before. I suspect there is better pollination out there

Mine are in the open blowaway. This weekend I'll make it my project to sink them like I did with the tomatoes. I'm sure someone advised me not to do this, but it could have been peppers? Then again, gardeners do sometimes have conflicting opinions. A nosy neighbour hung over my fence last night, told me I was doing well, but my tomatoes should be in white pots!! I chose not to argue with him.

Florence, as far as I am aware you are correct that peppers and chillis should not be potted-on deeper than they were originally.

I've never noticed mine producing roots from the stem so I agree with you that the stem could rot if too wet.

I'd guess that you could plant a little deeper but not more than half an inch.


I'd wait and let others add their opinions before re-potting (and I'll do a search later to see if I can find any evidence one way or the other!!).

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I don't pot mine any deeper. Just add a cane if they grow too tall or are bendy.
They seem to do fine. Those plants look fine to me. A cane for the wiggly one and watch them grow

Well I've just googled around a dozen online guides to growing chilli and all but one makes no mention of potting on deeper than before suggesting do not plant deeper.

However, there was one guide that said they grew roots like tomatoes so I could be wrong.

At the moment my research would suggest 11 to 1 odds against going deeper.



Now I'm going to have to furtle my chillis to see where the roots are growing!!!!

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Sorry guys that really was pants advice... from me.
Head slapping has commenced

I agree, you guys have got to be right. Not good for the stem on a juvenile plant like that.

Mine got potted on up to the seed leaves very early on. The roots have developed to about 10mm below the seed leaf joint on this one, pretty much on the surface of the compost.



The tall one measures 41" from windowsill to the highest flower bud.



I'm definitely doing something wrong I think. Another two flowers have fallen off, stalk and all. I've been hand-pollinating and I thought they doing fine, but that 3 flowers in 2 days that have just dropped like this.

It's in a huff about something

Its saucer is dry; gets water in the morning then a little in the evening; the soil is dark brown on top, only just moist so that it binds, but never soggy and it's mixed with perlite.

Maybe I need to lay off the feed for a bit?

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159, growing is not an exact science (like raising kids!!!) - what fails for one person works for another.


Please don't take this as crowing, just passing on info that you might find useful...

Your pics look like the Inferno chillis I'm growing; mine have been in a larger (9 or 10 inch diameter) pot for many weeks now; they are in a greenhouse but well shaded against strong sun; they have a little bottom heat from my heated wires to try and stop the heat dropping below 17 degC at night; temp during day is 30 degC max; the compost has been kept very dry until they set fruit; they were not fed at all before fruit set; they are cropping nicely now; they are now fed with tomorite.

I've had flowers drop off in earlier years as well; I put it down to too hot in the day and too cold in the night. But as the plants matured they set fruit well and cropped well into the autumn so I think if you are patient all will be well!!

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Thanks teakdesk.

I've never grown chillis from seed before so it's great to get info like that, and helps me try and figure out the problem. Appreciated mate, thanks. It's very interesting learning about this stuff too.

Mine are Fothergills Hot Cayenne. The pots are 7.5" diameter. I wasn't planning on potting them on again but I do have some 9" pots. Dunno if it's worth it though. If they get any bigger I'm going to build a tree house in one of them LOL.

I don't think temperature is a likely problem as we've had hardly any sun up here in the last week - mostly fog - and warm nights, so they never really get colder than 18 deg and don't get too fried. I might get a max/min thermomoter and check this out.

One thing though, I've just found a leaf beetle on it... Wonder what damage it has been doing too!

They've all got a few growing chillis - one 3" woo hoo! So I am hopeful for lots and lots of chillis.

Cheers! Dave

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159 ... your plants look a bit drawn/leggy tbh.
I'd get them outside if I were you ... they just aren't getting enough light on that windowsill

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My peppers all got a nasty attack of greenfly early on, the leaves were very distorted. I got rid of the greenfly but any new leaves were distorted, the plants looked really unhappy. I put off potting them on and didn't know whether to bother. I did eventually and in the last 2 weeks they've romped away, the leaves have been straightening out there are flowers and even the first chilli! They obviously needed more space and fresh compost. Doh!!

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I think most people plant chillies differently, much like tomatoes, hence all the conflicting advice! Main thing is to find things that work for you and stick with it as long as it keeps working, imo!

I'm a seedling burier too btw - many of mine start off leggy as I haven't got the best light levels in my house early in the year and they do fine, so don't worry bout having done that - they're like tomatoes and happily grow roots from the stem!

You could try a drench water of around an inch or so at the top of the pot and then leave them to nearly dry out before watering again (pot will be fairly light), seems to work for mine and is far less work! I get a little bit of flower drop early on also if the temperatures aren't quite hot enough or the light levels not right, but they've always (so far) caught up and given large crops to make up for that later on.

Fair warning if you do decide to pot them on - they tend to use the extra space (though you'll end up with more chillies)! I used 10-12 inch pots for many of mine last year and ended up with huge monsters of plants taking over my house and home! This year I stuck mainly to 8 inch to have smaller plants and give me room for something else, as I've still probably got a couple of hundred chillies in the freezer from last season.

Chillies are very fun to grow though! Tonnes of different varieties out there to keep you hooked for years, which reminds me *goes to look for more seeds for next year*!

I think the lesson I learned there TS, is that all the seedlings which I grew on upstairs windowsills were too warm and all went a bit leggy. These plants spent two months up there, but are now downstairs where it's cooler. Same amount of light though. I'd rather not subject them to beasties outside if possible

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There's not much that will attack a healthy chilli plant. Put 'em out

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~ "I would rather do a good hours work weeding than write two pages of my best; nothing is so interesting as weeding" ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

I promise not to mention the rather excellent Search function again. Feel free to slap me if I do

I would have agreed with you here two sheds until the other day when 100's of tiny caterpillars stormed one of my chillis. Kept thinking I'd got them all and lo and behold I find more happily munching away
The poor plant looks more like a paper doily at the moment! Mind you it will have to go back out to the GH soon as being indoors is affecting the pollination rate

Coming into this discussion a bit late, I know, but...

I always, always, always re-pot chillis and peppers deeper than they were in the pot before. I have never lost a plant to stem rot or any other troubles of that sort. In fact the only thing I've lost a plant to is frost at the end of the season... What usually happens is that I end up with plants with good, thick, strong stems Most of my plants are still in 5" pots, when they go up a final pot size I'll put them an inch or so deeper than they are now. Each to their own I guess, but burying the stems up to the seed leaves is unlikely to do any damage - this is the part of the stem which should be underground, the seed leaves should be more or less on the surface and I plant all plants with this part of the stem underground if they have gotten a bit 'stretched'.

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Hello all,

Also coming into the discussion late but I am a complete novice so please bear with me.

I was given some chilli plant seedlings 2 months ago and planted them in 10" diameter pots. I have a habanero chilli and a tabasco chilli plant. They are on my conservatory windowsill and are ginormous!! I have only used a bog standard tomato feed once a week and kept them watered. just a few questions to the chilli officianodoes on here please?

1) What's a seed leaf? (told you i was a novice)
2) When will I actually get some chillis?
3) Do you actually have to do anything with the plant flowers to promote yield ie. pollinate?
....and finally 4) I cut open a chilli I bought from the supermarket a while ago and for a laugh bunged the extracted seeds in a pot with some compost. These have since grown into seedlings and I have repotted them into a larger pot but stuck them outside in a sunny sheltered position. Will these actually grow?

thanks for your attention feel free to take the mick !!

ttfn,

stumpy

Please don't answer Q4 as it is a daft question. I really must read threads more thouroughly! As mentioned above chilli plants can grow outside but more open to beastie attack

Stumpy, have you got any flowers yet???

I don't think you should feed them until they have flowers.

Seed leaves are the first leaves to emerge from a seed that germinates, like this one (which they pretty much all look like)


and they don't usually resemble the true leaves of the plant, which are the next ones that grow.


(This is a tomato plant in the photos by the way, just as an example)

The plant should be able to develop roots up to the seed leaves - or at least that's my understanding as a novice. You'll hear it mentioned often on here when people talk about potting on

When will you get chillis...? hopefully soon!

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Right, so I'll sink some to the seed leaves and just pot on the rest and see what happens! Thanks everyone (I think.....)
Flo

159,

Thats brilliant!! thanks for the info. As I didn't grow my main 2 plants from seed I just replanted the bigger plants into larger pots. As I now know, I should have planted them upto the seed leaves but as the plants are too well established now (about 2 foot tall) then I think it would be a mistake and potential damging to the plant to replant the whole thing upto the seed leaves. These plants also have loads of flowers and lots of tiny little bud things (as do my bell pepper plants) which I eagerly anticipate will grow into Chillis. Still I know for next time. (Will there be a next time if they are perrennials?!?)

However the small plants I grew from seed and just bunged in a pot outside I will replant and see what happens.

Thanks again!! I feel like I have 1 knowledge point now!!

Heya Stumpy. Chillies self pollinate, though folks also do various things to "encourage" pollination such as tapping the flowers or stems, using a brush to tickle the flowers and so forth. I'm a sporadic stem tapper for my sins.

As far as overwintering it is entirely possible (though needs to be indoors or somewhere equivalent as they hate frost) and can give a much better and earlier crop than growing from seed (which can be too slow for some varieties to get much of a crop in the same year as planting the seeds).

I have tried three things so far found on various internet sites (all of which involved picking my favourite, healthy looking plants and bringing them indoors before frosts to a nice light windowsill):

1. The first one was just leaving the plants pretty much as is apart from some moderate pruning to make them neater and the shape I wanted to start from. Watering was probably only every week or two (each time they dried out and even then not drenching them as I would have in Summer). Once they started producing flowers I started weak feeds every week or two and boosted these up gradually if fruit set until Spring arrived. Flower drop did occur more in Jan/Feb due to low light levels I think, I started tapping at this point!

2. With the second method I cut back the whole plant to around three or four inches above the ground so it was pretty much just a stem (few with tiny leaf clumps) and reduced watering to a very small amount every couple of weeks. Once the plants started growing back (around Feb/March for most of mine, a little earlier for the tiny leaf clump ones) I watered as necessary and started weak feeds until they were flowering and back to normal levels in Spring.

3. The third one I tried was cutting back the plant to around four inches of bare stem with rootball trimming to match (height of rootball four inches below the stem base) then replacing in fresh compost. Very minimal watering (every week or two, slightly damp only) until it started to grow back in Spring, then boosting water and feeding gradually until back to normal levels in Spring.

As far as I have noticed, the first method allows you to get chillies in Winter if light levels are right, but stresses the plant. With both methods one and two I ended up refreshing the compost with a quick spring repot to get the plants back to moderate health, as they ended up looking a bit sickly by the time Spring arrived. The advantage of the second method over the first was plant health for sure - the chillies did appreciate the rest and did better than their counterparts overall with total crop.

The third method is my preferred, though as two plants never grew back (I think due to overwatering while dormant as these two were accidentally watered too much while I was on holiday and got wet rather than damp roots) I would say it is riskier. The big advantage seemed to be plant health - the harvest from this method easily outstripped the other two.

Would definitely be interested in trying other methods though if anyone has any good knacks? I have more plants this year that I want to keep so am after something really reliable!

This is my first attempt at growing chillies and I don't think it's going very well - can someone help!!!

I have 3 plants sitting on a sunny kitchen window sill, which look healthy and are producing lots of flowers, but the flowers and stems keep dropping off.

Each plant is in a 6" pot and I'm feeding them once a month and watering every few days. One of my cats likes to lick and pull off the lower leaves but I don't think that's causing any real damage to the plants (not so sure about the cat!!)

What am I doing wrong? Will I ever get any chillies from these plants?

sounds like they may not be getting pollinated, try putting them outside and letting the bee's get their mitts on them. Alternatively, try brushing the insides of the flowers with a little painbrush or cotton bud and spreading the pollen around any open flowers.

good luck

I have chilli plants in the house, greenhouse and on the plot. The ones in the greenhouse and house are doing OK, flowering and producing the odd chilli but the ones on the plot are going great guns and way ahead of the others. They are various varieties but all sown the same time.

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