Chilli Flowers Dropping.

[bluemoon]

My chillies are in flower, but when the flowers are dying back the whole flower, with stem, is dropping off the plant. My theory is that they haven't been pollinated, so today I've had a go at hand pollination. Is it possible that this is being caused by something else? They are growing in pots in the greenhouse in just the same way that I've grown them in the past without problem.

[Alice]

Welcome to the Vine Bluemoon. I think your chillies are just late. They always throw their flowers away to start with then make chillies like crazzy. They are self fertilising so the problem shouldn't be there.

You could check
Are they too hot
Are the flowers getting frazzled in the sun behind glass
Are they well watered

You could try misting them frequently
Talk love to them
Play them some music

Good luck. Hope you get lots of lovely chillies.

[Kristen]

"Is it possible that this is being caused by something else?"

Atmosphere too dry? Might need misting / spraying perhaps?

[SarzWix]

When we had this problem a couple of years ago we paid closer attention to watering, making sure the plants had steady moisture, and also fed them a little with tomato food. It seemed to work, but it might have been that they'd have set fruit without interference anyway?! You could try hand pollinating a bit as well - I always do, but mainly coz I can't resist faffing!

[bluemoon]

Thanks everyone. I'll stop panicking now. My next question would have been; is there any chance that the sweet peppers would cross pollinate with the chillies? But if they're self-fertile I suppose the answer is no.

[Alison]

They usually drop a lot of flowers if they get too dry, must be a survival technique of some sort.

Was under the impression that peppers could cross fertilise but that's only a problem if you want to save the seed in which case you need to provide isolation to the plant in question.

[unconcerned]

sweet peppers and chillis are all capsicums, all the same thing. They are made up of different species - sweet peppers are usually annuum. Chillis can also be annuum, or about thirty other species. Some species cross very easily so an annuum sweet pepper would easily cross with an annuum hot pepper. Yet a chinense species pepper would not cross very easily with another chinense species pepper. There is a big table somewhere showing which capsicum species cross with each other, but I cannot lay my hands on it. As Alison says though, the cross would only appear in the seeds of the next generation.

[RobintheBobin]

Annoying isn't it, this has happened on and off with my chillis all summer; I checked with some and it turns out that they had become completely pot bound so not getting a drop of nutrition. Into bigger pots they went!

I also get the feeling from mine that they don't like irregular watering and would prefer little and often...well that's what they told me

And finally...I got the feeling that my Apache chilli just dropped whole load as it couldn't maintain the looking after of all those chillis; i suppose unless they are in the ground there is only so much goodness to go round.

RtB

[bluemoon]

Thank you all. I now have several fruits. I just hope we get the sun to ripen them.