Grow Your Own Magazine

My chillies where doing great in all that sunshine a month or so back, but since then they have stopped growing. There are various sizes which are just not ripening OR growing, they're just sat there. At the same time new ones are starting to grow but are ripening in a few days even though they are less than 1cm in size!

What do I do now? they are getting plenty of water, had some plant food last week, room is 18c or so...

Bit more light perhaps??- as it has certainly become duller recently with all this rain.
Am not an expert, but it's my initial thought

they are on a window ledge in the conservatory, and get sun (or at least light) for a lot of the day...

try bannana skins like you do for toms, works with my normal peppers.

__________________
Yo an' Bob
Walk lightly on the earth
take only what you need
give all you can
and your produce will be bountifull

banana skins?????? dexterdog

__________________
Appreciate the little things in life because one day you will realise they are the big things

Bananas give off some ethylene which helps ripen fruit

see i'm not bonkers! thanks for the science bit jazz.

__________________
Yo an' Bob
Walk lightly on the earth
take only what you need
give all you can
and your produce will be bountifull

I don't want them to ripen, I want them to grow! the 'biggest' one is only about 3cm long! And the new ones that are ripening are the size of a large pea...

what kind are they? they could be naturally small, i'm sure they'll taste lovley.

__________________
Yo an' Bob
Walk lightly on the earth
take only what you need
give all you can
and your produce will be bountifull

They do come in different sizes...from pea size unpards.
Was there a picture of what they look like on the packet?

I think to be honest, the growing season for peppers is coming to an end soon ( not that I know much about them) so maybe you should be chuffed with whatever you get this year , and then look after it over winter indoors and maybe you will be better rewarded next year?.

They're F1 "Super" Fresco and they're supposed to look like this -



The biggest one actually looks like this (and has done for many weeks now) -



On this one you can see its size and a few of the tiny red ones -



So can I still eat the tiny ones?

I was chuffed, they were sprouting out all over the place and growing rapidly, I thought I was in for a bumper harvest - then they all just stopped growing...

Sorry....just had a good chuckle!!!
That's the sort of luck I have!!

I would certainly eat the red one (bless it! - it's tried it's hardest!). I should think you could eat the green ones too , but it might be worth hanging on for a few more days as it looks like we are in for a few more hot sunny days which might just tip the balance.

I'm also having the same problem with apples and plums. My golden delicious tree is weighed down, but again they seem to have stopped growing (and are only half the size of a proper GD. And ditto for the plums - there was loads of them, grew fast for a while then stopped. then stayed like that for ages, and now ripening but half the size you would expect... maybe it's just the weather...

Agree - could be shortage of water for the trees.
Did you thin out the fruit on the trees? That would have made them grow bigger.
I have a small orchard ( sounds cool eh??? ) 20ftx20ft -and it's the second year the trees have fruited, so I am a novice clearly.
I did however pull off about 1/4 of the crop a few weeks ago -just as the books say (and boy was that hard to do!!)
Now I'm glad I did because in the past 2 weeks the fruit is suddenly getting huge. Maybe that would have helped ??

when do they say to do that? and how? which ones? I assume an even spread across the tree?
Well they grew well in all that hot weather when there was no rain... (but I watered them well with recyled rain water)... now it's p*****g it down they've stopped...

As I said...I am a beginner with fruit trees and bushes...so I've been reading up 'The Fruit Expert' by Dr D G Hessayon

The book is in the shed on the allotment, so can't give you the ISBN number. I've found it very interesting, but always google aswell to see if things like pruning are explained more clearly with better instructions/diagrams to make it clearer to me.
I think it suggested thinning the fruit in July if I recall.

Don't get dishartened with this years gardening...it really has been a strange one weatherwise and next year is bound to be different. I've had quite a few disasters too but have kept quiet about them!!

Hi JXM - mine are quite small as well (the chillies!), but at last! they are starting to go red! happy days Dexterdog

__________________
Appreciate the little things in life because one day you will realise they are the big things

decided how lucky I am to have at least a few green chillies on my outdoor plants......so I've fleeced them incase of frost tonight!! 5oC expected!!