A Tale of Two Chillies

[HotStuff]

I have two Hungarian Hot Wax Chilli plants, Maggie & Buddha. Maggie began flowering first and was also the first to produce a fruit by a few days. She now has the one fruit, which is about 9cm long and at least 3 other flowers have fallen off. Buddha produced several flowers and now has 4 smaller fruit which seem to be growing OK. The two plants were both grown from seed sown on the same day and treated pretty much identically apart from the fact they're on windowsills in different rooms of the house. Any suggestions as to what's going on and what I should do to maximise my crop?

[tamsin]

Chop of the big fruit on Maggie. It came to far ahead of the other flowers so developed too much and now she's too busy growing it to develop more. If you chop it off you should get another fluff of flowers and hopefully a group of chilli's developing instead of a single

[cupcake]

I agree.All Maggies strength is going into ripening the big pod. You'll get plenty later. Let us know how hot it is! I've heard they aren't that hot and I have 4 plants!

[zazen999]

I read on here about removing the first bud, and I had an early chili with one flower, so removed it and within a couple of days I've got 2 flowers one has already gone with baby chili underneath and loads more just ready to open.

[Alice]

Hungarian Hotwax are not very hot - they are quite mild chillies. They get their name from their appearance rather than their taste.

Hot Stuff, the difference between your two plants is probably the windowsill they are on. Once they are flowering they don't like to stand in blazing sunshine - the flowers just fry. If you move them back from the glass until the fruit has set I think they will get on better. Hotwax usually flowers and fruits prolifically.

They are lovely stuffed and roasted.
I use cream cheese, mixed with a little lemon juice, stir in some crushed garlic and any herb or anything else you like, stuff into the split chillies and put in the oven or under the grill for 10 mins. Enjoy.

[Alice]

Here they are stuffed and grilled.
Yeah, yeah, I know. Who takes pics of their vegetables and dinners.

[HotStuff]

Thanks guys, I'm sure I read somewhere a while ago about "king chilli" syndrome, where a plant puts all its effort into the first fruit and gets blossom drop, but when I searched again for it I couldn't find it. So tomorrow morning the big one will get harvested, sliced in half, filled with cream cheese, sprinkled with breadcrumbs and shoved under the grill

ETA: Alice thanks for that, your posts were actually while I was composing mine. I read that recipe somewhere else, possibly from you?

[cupcake]

Thanks for the info Alice, I had an idea they weren't very hot, but I have loads that are, and that recipe looks delicious!

[vikkib]

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Here they are stuffed and grilled.
Yeah, yeah, I know. Who takes pics of their vegetables and dinners.

This could be that start of a new thread... the 'Rate My Plate' thread!

They do look yummy!

[HotStuff]

Well, the deed is done and it tasted pretty good to me. Obviously it was still green, but it tasted of Chilli and even stuffed with cream cheese it was tangy enough. Just hope I get more Chillies now

Thanks again.