Newbie Chilli Grower - How do I know when to pick?

Hello,

Welcome to the forum!

You can pick chillies at any point, with the heat developing the more ripe they are. Pick when they're green, and you'll have a pepper with hardly any (if any) heat. Pick when (red in case of your scotch bonnets) and you're head will be blown off

Watering them - I tend to let mine dry out before watering them - they do seem to cope much better with drought than other fruit, watering from the bottom is better (for a few reasons) - stand the pots in a tray of water, or saucer and water into that, you'll see the plant take the water it needs - once it doesn't take any more in, then you know the compost has enough water in it - discard the rest of the water or take the pots out of the trays. Last year, in my greenhouse I was watering them twice weekly, whilst everything else in there was watered at least once a day.

You can pick them and ripen indoors, yes - again when they reach their final intended colour (red again in the scotch bonnet's example). You can either string them up, we used to thread some cotton through the stalks and put them on our cupboard door handles.

The packets of seeds may also give an indication of the days until maturity.