2 months goes quickly

Well it has been two months since my last update. I kept meaning to do an update but kept forgetting. In the past 2 months my chilli and pepper plants have made amazing progress. Lots of new chillies have grown, ripened and then been eaten by me. Most of them (23) have been from my Apache plant. In all I have consumed over 40 chillies and peppers to date.

Hungarian Hot Wax

Two days ago my first Bulgarian Carrot began to ripen. The plant which lives in my room has 3 other unripened green chillies.

Ripening Bulgarian Carrot Chilli

My numerous type of plant is Santa Fe Grande. I have given a few of them away. I have probably about 6 or 7 plants that have produced fruit. I have kept one of these plants in my room. On this plant I finally have a fruit that has begun to ripen. In fact it has been doing this slowly for about a week now.

Santa Fe Grande

My Habanero plant has also been doing well in the last 2 months. It produced 2 more fruit that have since ripened to red. I have yet to pick these fruit yet (through fear of the heat). Despite not having picked these fruit, the plant has started to grow two more chillies.

Two red Habanero Chillies

Another plant that has began to grow fruits is are my two Demon Reds on my windowsill. I have about 10 small chillies at the moment.

Demon Red Chillies

The 3 plants from last year have had very good yields. Between the three I had 18 chillies with all of them changing to a glossy red colour. All of these lovely chillies have been consumed by me. To my joy I have at least 5 new chillies and lots of new flowers on these plants to date.

One of the new chillies

Easily my biggest fruit I have grown is on my Anaheim plant. The plant looks a bit worn out but has produced a fantastic yield of peppers so far. I have 1 large pepper and 5 small peppers.

To date the only variety of plant not to produced a fruit is the Tabasco. The plant is my room is very strong but seems incapable of producing chillies.
I have got rid of quite a few of my plants in the last 2 months. Quite a few got damaged when my greenhouse frame in the back garden got blown over by the wind on a few occasions.
I will try to update this blog more often and not be such a lazy bugger!!

A few new chillies

A few more of my plants have started to produce fruits. My Bell Pepper plants have really come alive recently. I have around 7 Bell Peppers growing on various plants spread around the house and garden.

Small Bell Pepper

 My Anaheim and Hungarian Hot Wax Plants also have their first fruits as well. I originally moved the Anaheim from a south facing window to a north facing window as it was getting too much sunlight. This move was definitely beneficial and it has since grown into a very strong plant.

Anaheim

Hungarian Hot Wax

My Habanero is growing its second chilli. I just hope this one looks a little more like a Habanero looks like.

One of my "Miscellaneous" chilli plants in the greenhouse has 2 or 3 fruits growing. Unfortunately I couldn't get a decent picture as the fruits are very small and they just looked like flowers.

June update

In the past month since my last update my chillies plants have grown a massive amount. I believe I currently have over 30 chillies and peppers growing, not including the two I have already eaten. The first fruit I ate was from my Banana Pepper plant. At the time of picking which was about 3 weeks ago, it was the only fruit on the plant. Since then, the plant has produced more peppers. 

Banana Pepper before harvesting

Banana Pepper after harvesting

The second fruit I ate was from my Habanero Chilli plant. From having used a Habanero before I believe the shape of my fruit was not quite right. It did not have the proper “lantern” shape I was looking for. This may have been to the growing conditions not being quite right or it may have cross-breed with another one of my plants. It was certainly a very spicy chilli. I used in the making of a curry. Needless to say I definitely could feel its presence in the dish.  

Habanero Chilli before harvesting

Habanero Chilli after harvesting

Despite so far only sampling these two chillies, many of my other plants have produced many chillies and peppers. All four of my last year’s plants have produced many chillies. I now believe through studying these four plants that they are different chilli plants. I do understand chillies enough to explain how I have four different chilli types from seeds from a single chilli. However I am definitely not complaining!

My two largest last year plants have chillies that grow straight down. The difference comes in the shape of the chillies. One has straight, short stubby fruits that I believe could be a Jalapeno. The other has longer curved fruit that I believe could be a Serrano chilli. These are just guesses from looking at information on the internet. 

Maybe a Serrano Chilli

Maybe a Jalapeno Chilli

The other two plants from last year have fruits that grow upwards. The one on my windowsill is a Fresno Chilli. I am unsure about the other one which resides in the greenhouse. The fruit are of a peculiar shape and much smaller than the Fresno. 

Fresno Chilli on my Windowsill

Another plant that has fruit growing is my Apache. At my last count it had 6 chillies growing. It also has many un-pollinated flowers.

Apache Chilli

To my knowledge I have only one other plant that has a pepper growing. Despite a run of bad luck with this particular plant, it has endeavoured to survive and I discovered this morning that it has started growing a Bell Pepper. It was first knocked of the windowsill by one of my cats and then it had a particularly horrible case of green fly. 

Bell Pepper plant with fertilised flower

Many more of my plants have flowers. These include numerous bell pepper plants, my Anaheim, two of my “miscellaneous” chilli plants and my Hungarian Hot Wax. 

Hungarian Hot Wax

Anaheim

My Bulgarian Carrot, Santa Fe Grande and Demon Chilli all have developing flower buds. My Tabasco although growing well has yet to form any buds. 

Demon Red Chilli plant

While visiting my lovely girlfriend Jenny in Northamptonshire, I purchased a cheap small greenhouse. I have erected it and placed it in the back garden. I have around 15 plants placed in there. These plants include Tabasco, Demon, Jalapeno, Santa Fe Grande, Bulgarian Carrot chilli plants as well as 4 Bell Pepper plants. These plants enjoy a good few hours of sunshine in the early morning. 

There is still a lot of guessing with the Bulgarian Carrots and Santa Fe Grande plants. Having not labelled them when I first planted the seeds I have no idea which is which. The plants look to similar for me to tell the difference. 

Not sure which type......

With the amount of change I have witnessed in the past month, I think I should not wait another month for my next update. I have been extremely surprised by the amount of change I have witnessed.

May update

With a long run of sunny, warm weather, my chilli plants have progressed very well. Recently the 3 older plants that I keep on my windowsill have been dropping their flowers. I looked up for solutions to this problem. I had either been over watering them or the flowers were not being pollinated. To rectify this problem I have reduced the frequency of my watering and have been using a cotton bud to pollinate the flowers. Which ever was the correct solution, all 3 chilli plants now have growing fruits.

I know it is not the best picture but my camera isn't very good. It is supposed to show a chilli growing on my plant. If you have perfect eye sight like I do, you might be able to see it :D

 I have an open flower on my Banana Pepper plant and two open flowers on my Habanero plant. I have read that growing Habanero chillies in the UK is difficult because of the cool temperatures. I guess I will have to see what happens with these flowers. My Banana Pepper plant which now lives in the kitchen looks as though a fruit may be growing out of the flower.

Habanero Flower

Banana Pepper plant with flower

The other plants on my windowsill are doing well. My newest plant; the Apache, is doing very well. It looks like a mini version of my Habanero plant. It has produced many buds. Some of these buds have began to drop down, similar to what happened to the Habanero's buds before they flowered.

Apache (far right) next to Habanero.

 Next to my Habanero plant (see photo above) is a pot containing 3 Tabasco plants. They have been showing very strong growth and are in some need of re-potting. I have currently ran out of compost. I have a great need to re-pot a number of plants.

On of the other side of my windowsill are 6 other varieties. I have 2 plants each of Bulgarian Carrot and Santa Fe Grande. I also have an Anaheim, a Hungarian Hot Wax, a Jalapeno and 2 Demon Chilli plants. All of these plants are progressing nicely. However the Anaheim does sometimes struggle with the warm temperatures. In the future I may need to move this plant to another part of the house.

Anaheim (far left) next to Jalapeno.

Santa Fe Grande (right, I think), Hungarian Hot Wax (top centre), Demon (bottom centre) and Bulgarian Carrot (left, i think)

 I have 5 Bell pepper plants in the kitchen. They seem to prefer the cooler, less intense conditions. I believe that a few of them may not be far off producing buds.

 All of my plants in the greenhouse are developing at a slightly slower rate due to the less sunlight they receive plus the cool temperatures at night. However I do feel confident that some of them will produce fruit. Some of them do need re-potting which will happen when I get round to purchasing the compost (might happen tomorrow).

All my greenhouse plants. Lots of different varieties including Bell, Demon, Jalapeno, Tabasco, Bulgarian Carrot and Santa Fe Grande. (There is also a Tomato plant)

Lots of re-potting in the April sun.

Today I spent a time re-potting my Bulgarian Carrot and Santa Fe Grande chilli seedlings. Still to this day I am unsure about the type of chilli plants the seedlings are. In my infinite wisdom I forgot to label up the pots. I guess I will have to wait to see if they produce fruit.  Luckily the fruit from these varieties are very visually different. I have 5 plants of one type and 10 from the other. I have two of each type on my windowsill. My brother has 3 seedlings in his room (another south facing room). The rest of the plants are in the greenhouse.

2 of each Bulgarian Carrot and Santa Fe Grande on the left and right of the tray. Hungarian Hot Wax is centre top and Apache F1 is bottom centre.

I also re-potted some of the Bell Pepper plants that didn’t have their own pots. I have also had to move all the sweet pepper plants (Banana and Bell) from my windowsill as the sunlight they received there didn’t suit them. They were wilting and some had weak stems. The Banana Pepper plants and 3 Bell Pepper plants are now in the kitchen and looking a lot healthier. My sister Emma has another one and the rest are up in my parent’s room.

Bell Pepper

2 x Bell Pepper

Banana Pepper

I have now re-potted all 5 varieties of chillies and peppers that my girlfriend gave me. Having already re-potted the Anaheim and Jalapeno seedlings the 3 which were left were the Tabasco, Demon Red and Hungarian Wax. Both the Tabasco and Demon produced quite a few seedlings while I only had one Hungarian Wax. I have 2 Demon Red, 3 Tabasco and the single Hungarian Wax seedling on my windowsill.

Demon Red (top) and Anaheim

 (Bottom)

Jalapeno

Tabasco

I have a new chilli plant. My mum got me an Apache F1 plant while she was on holiday in Buckinghamshire.  It looks like a mini version of my Habanero plant. 

My new Apache F1 plant.

My Habanero plant is thriving in this unseasonably warm weather. It has begun to branch off in places, especially at the top. A number of buds have formed which will hopefully develop into awesomely spicy Habanero chillies.

Buds on the top of my Habanero plant.

Another view of my Habanero

And finally an update of my 2^nd year plants. I am amazed by the amount of flowers the 3 plants on my windowsill have produced. The 4^th one which is in the greenhouse is doing a lot better but has a lot of catching up to do. 

Many flower/fruits

Saturday DIY

With the help of my dad, I have built a replacement for the fragile poly-tunnel structure. The tunnel was quickly becoming insufficient in housing my growing plants.
I had been planning a replacement for sometime and had drawn up plans which I used today.

Wedged until hinges are fitted.

Inside my new structure.

The project is not totally finished as can be seen in the photo on the right. Hinges need to be fitted to the door. I have wedged the door shut currently but the hinges should be fitted by Monday.


I also re-potted some 4 Jalapeno seedlings and 1 Anaheim seedling. One of each type of plant I placed on my windowsill. My sister had one of the other Jalapenos with the other two in the new structure.

Jalapeno (left) and Anaheim (right) before re-potting

All the seedlings re-potted