Chilli Advice

Plants
You can buy plants from many nurseries and garden centres - even online. If you do choose to purchase plants, rather than seeds, take care to choose plants which are pest and disease free.

 
Seeds
We think it's much more fun to grow from seed, then you can choose from a wide range of varieties with different flavours, colours and shapes. The following suppliers have lots of varieties...

Simpson Seeds
Tel: 01985 845004, www.simpsonseeds.co.uk
Thompson & Morgan
Tel: 01473 688 588, www.thompson-morgan.com
Suttons
Tel: 0844 922 2899,   www.suttons.co.uk

The great thing about chillies (and sweet peppers) is that there are so many varieties to choose from. You can find a variety that is perfectly matched to your growing space and location.

Small varieties such as ‘Apache’ are perfectly at home on the windowsill but if you have the space in your greenhouse there is a vast array of flavour sensations to tantalise your taste buds.

Here are some of our favourite varieties of chillies

Mild
Fresno Supreme – excellent for stir fries etc., thick, mild flesh.
Pasilla Bajio – Part of the Mexican Holy Trinity, zesty fruit are dark and brown.
Padron – Spanish tapas pepper is mild when small and green, and hot if left to mature.
Hungarian Black – Short, brown/black fruit with good flavour.

Medium
Georgia Flame – Sweet and spicy, thick flesh.
Krimson Lee – Excellent choice for pizza, thick sweet flesh
Portugal – Medium hot, large cayenne fruit, one of the first to begin to fruit
Rocoto Red – Resembles a small bell pepper, sometimes called ‘Gringo Killer’, slow to mature
Joes Long Cayenne –  One of our favourites, good for paprika as it dries well.

Hot
Friars Hat – Attractive, short, squat shaped fruits are brightly coloured, slow to mature
Ring of Fire – Thin, cayenne type fruit are good for drying and very hot.
Pusa Jwala  -  Popular in Indian curries, excellent knobbly feature.
Trinidad Scorpion – So called because the curl at the end of the fruit resembles a Scorpions tail, exceptionally hot.
Chocolate Bhut Jolokia –A chocolate coloured version of the Guinness Book of Record’s hottest chilli in the world.Bih Jolokia – Another name for the Bhut Jolokia,

Sweet
Tasty Grill Yellow
TastyGrill Red
Corno Rosso or Corno del Torro

If you have a heated greenhouse, seeds can be sown as early as February but for unheated greenhouses, sowing is best left to late March or early April. 

If you are planning to grow in a HydroGrow growing kit, you can consider planting out up to three weeks earlier than soil grown plants facilitated by the solution heater. Sow seeds thinly in trays of moist seed compost and place in our heated Vitopod Propagator. Take care not to over-water as the compost needs to be moist but not soggy.

Once the seeds have germinated and grown two true leaves, pot on into 75mm pots or rockwool cubes and grow on in a warm, light space.

Once the plants have established a healthy root system, at approximately 25-35cm high, plant out into final positions in your Grow Kit.

Peppers and chillies need plenty of water so our chilli growing kits are designed to provide a constant supply of water and nutrients directly to the plant roots so they can take up what they need, when they need it.

The plants will produce many flowers but not all of these will produce fruit so don’t be alarmed if a small percentage of flowers drop. Provide support either with canes or a support frame or you could use twine suspended from the rafters of your greenhouse if growing indoors.

Check seedlings for slugs. If growing in a greenhouse, check for aphids, whitefly and red spider mite, and treat as with aubergine. Prevent any fungal diseases with a warm, light environment.

Harvest regularly, as fruit become ready, for a continued supply. Peppers can be picked when green or when ripe and will ripen if picked when green but they will be extra sweet if allowed to ripen on the plant. If you can provide a little warmth and protection later in the year you can enjoy the fruits of your labour until well into the autumn.

Grow using Hydro

If you would like to grow professional sized harvests of chillies, using Hydro will help you achieve optimium yields. It's an easier and cleaner alternative to growing in bags or pots: no soil, no digging, no guessing - just great results.

Hydro is perfect for growing chillis. Our soil-less Hydrogrow kit, a self-watering tray, automatically provides plants with all the water and nutrients they need when they need them. You get bumper crops, with yields typically 3x greater than produced by plants produced in soil.

 A mains powered pump, constantly delivers a shallow film of nutrient solution (nutrient & water) over the roots of the plants. The nutrient solution re-circulates from the integrated reservoir, over the roots and back into the reservoir over and over again. In time this produces a really thick, healthy root mat.

If you would like to grow using Hydro, our self-watering Hydrogrow NFT will help you achieve amazing crops and fabulous yields.
Lean more 

To get started you will need ...

Seeds -

from a garden centre or choose from our range of new starter seed packs.
Each starter pack includes 4 packets of seeds for £5.80.  

Learn More

Compost


Seed trays or small pots -

for sowing your seeds until ready to re-plant at 12 - 15cm tall.

To 'grow on' your seedlings you will need ...

A large growing container or one of our 3 great growing kits.

1. For Great Chillies Simply..
choose our set of 4x Self-watering Pots - Quadgrow

Grow bumper chillies on your patio or in your greenhouse with our self- watering pot kits. Your chillies are kept nourished thanks to the clever Smart-Mat powered watering.

We harvest over 7.9kg of veg in our Quadgrow.

Harvest results - Click here to see ours

Learn More

2. For Bumper Chilli Harvests Uniquely .. .
choose our Solar-powered Self Watering Planter (with Solar Panel included) - Solargrow

Raise bumper harvests in this large planter which feeds, waters and super-oxygenates plants 2x every hour thanks to a solar-powered pump and solar panel (both included).

A very happy Mr Finlay had a fantastic season in 2009 growing with his Solargrow. He gave up after counting more than 140 IIdi tomatoes on one truss.

Harvest results - Click here to see ours

3. For the Biggest Harvests of Chillies ....
choose our Hardest Working Self-watering Growing Kit - Hydrogrow NFT

Grow the biggest harvests of chillies professionally with electric pump powered watering. This hard-working growing kit constantly pumps water and nutrients directly to the plant root so you can produce 3 to 4x more yield.

Harvest results - Click here to see ours

If you would like more information on growing chillies or simply have a question you would love answering, our Gardening Angels can help.

Give us a call on 0845 602 3774 or drop us an email at info@greenhousesensation.co.uk.