Our fantastic Gardening Angel Paul has been at it again and has already started pricking out the first chilli seedlings of 2013 after just 4 weeks. Watch our video of Paul pricking out Georgia Flame, Lemon Drop (my personal favourite), Portugal and Hungarian Black chillies. When these chillies are fully rooted Paul will transplant them into our Chilligrow and Quadgrow Planters.

Even in February we are still harvesting chillies from our Chilligrow Planter (designed in consultation with chilli experts). We are lucky enough to have been growing our chillies in a heated greenhouse so have been able to keep our chilli plants at about 11c over winter. Take a look at our chilli advice page for some inspiration for your 2013 growing season.

Gardening Angel Paul is transplanting some of our favourite hot chillies, Madame Jeanette, Trinidad scorpion, Bih Jolokia and Chocolate Bhut Jolokia into the Quadgrow self-watering planter, which keeps plants perfectly fed and watered at all times for strong healthy chilli plants and bumper harvests.

See why our customers love the Quadgrow so much. http://www.greenhousesensation.co.uk/quadgrow.html

Our Chilligrow Chilli growing kit has been designed by chilli experts for bigger chilli harvests and keeps your chillies perfectly fed and watered without ever over watering.

Our Gardening Angel Paul is sowing 5 of our favourite chilli varieties - Fresno Supreme, Ring of Fire, Portugal, Hungarian Black and Joe's Long and we just cant wait to see the results.

These chilli seeds will germinate in our Vitopod Heated Propagator and in 3 to 4 weeks times our chilli plants will be ready to be pricked out into small pots. Once our chilli plants have rooted through, we will be able to transfer them into one of our Chilligrow planters, where we can look forward to producing a bumper chilli harvest.

For bigger harvests of your favourite chilli you could overwinter your plant. We overwinter our Trinidad Scorpion, this year is its 5th year. Overwintered plants will usually produce a better crop in their second year as the plants can get started more quickly in the spring and enjoy a longer growing season.

Capsicum pubescens (such as our Rocoto Red chilli) tend to overwinter better than Capsicum annuum (such as Joe’s Long or Portugal).

Overwintering is the practice of providing a protective environment for a plant throughout the winter. The lack of light and the colder temperatures mean that plants don’t grow much at all between October and January, but an overwintered plant can get off to a head start when the light returns in February or March.

Below is a video of Paul, our Gardening Angel pruning our 5 year old Trinidad Scorpion in preparation to over winter. The Trinidad Scorpion will be living our greenhouse, with an average temperature of 12C to encourage growth. Allow plenty of airflow around your plants to avoid bacterial and viral disease build up.  

The weekend saw us trek down to  West Sussex for the West Dean Chilli Fiesta. This was the first chilli-event unveiling of the Chilligrow and we were delighted with the warm response it received. John M's Chilligrow stole the show and certainly attracted a great deal of attention.

We had a great time catching up with old customers and chilli friends meeting new customers and, of course sampling th great food at the show.

We know that Joe's Long chillies should be - well...long, but this one takes the biscuit at a whopping 33cms. We've checked the World Records and there is no listing for the longest chilli, so we've submitted and entry - fingers crossed.

The prized chilli is growing in a Hydrogrow NFT in our greenhouse and we're under strict instructions not to allow visitors to pick it. We'll keep you posted on how we get on with the record.