Chillies - growing and overwintering 2018

[Mitzi]

I've got some pics too!

These were all turned into powder.
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These were harvested a few days ago. Top row: HG4 Comet's tail, aji Peruvian, padron, cayenetta. 2nd row: apache, paper lantern, lemon drop, golden ghost. 3rd row: tabasco, chocolate habanero, cherry bomb, medina. 4th row: loco, aji omnicolour, "scotch bonnet", kitchen pepper, Carolina reaper, Trinidad perfume. Bottom row: Jalapeno (red and green), Jamaica yellow, birds eye and hot burrito.
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... and turned into these, well most of them. I had to add a couple of yellow/orange sweet peppers to make up the yellow one, and a load of tomatillos for the green one. Garlic and salt in all of them. They probably would've fermented by themselves, but I added some lactobacillus from the pellicle of a sour beer I had fermenting. They've really kicked off. The yellow and red ones are escaping from the jar!
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What a fabulous harvest! Have you done fermented sauces before or is this your first attempt? I'm not brave enough to try; I'd be scared mine would just go mouldy.

Dehydrated and powdered some nagabrain chocolate pods from this year with three reaper pods from last year (found at the back of the freezer drawer.) It only made a small amount of powder (they shrink down to almost nothing in the dehydrator) but it is powerful stuff. Made some chilli peanuts with 1/2 nagabrain & reaper powder and half nebru 7 powder. It's good stuff.

[IainM]

No, I've never fermented food before, but I've done a lot of beer, wine, mead and other alcoholic drinks. I hope they don't go mouldy, because there are a lot of chillies in there! Fingers crossed.

[Mitzi]

Yesterday's harvest - nowhere near as impressive as some of yours, but I love all the different shapes and colours.



Going vaguely clockwise from top:
Lots x Peach tigers tooth
4 x Basque (espelette)
8 x Nebru 7
6 x Aji White Fantasy
7 x Rocoto La Paz rojo
1 x Rezha
4 x Scotch bonnet (yellow)
1 x Burkina yellow - the green one (storm damage)
2 x Bahamian Goat
6 x Aji Champion
1 x BOC x Primo
4 x Choc Hab in the middle

[Mitzi]

I'd love to see some photos.

We had strong winds Saturday night / Sunday morning and the chilligrow plants blew over. Not too much damage, a couple of snapped branches but nothing major. There's not much to see, though, as the pods are still so tiny.



Here is the Reaper plant, with a watering can for scale, and an Ivory Coast 2 plant (which is fairly low and bushy) in front of it.

Edit: Oops, you might have to lie down to view the photo. Sorry.
Edit2: Have tried to fix it but probably made things worse. It's not easy, this photo posting malarkey.

[ChilliWilly70]

Some amazing harvests from you guys.
Heres my effort, I'm giving lots away
Not sure what to do so freezing them until I have plan. Over 200 pods between my two plants.

[4Shoes]

Much happier now that I've seen you harvest picture Mitzi.

You do need to see one and grow one to get a true appreciation of chilli growing. All this time I've been trying to make my Chocolate Hab grow larger pods when it was doing what it should.

This is the plant I over wintered last year (no pods), it had fruit (not viable) in Feb - picked them off and would not set fruit in flowers I'd isolated. moved it to its own house and marked branches, so hope the pots are viable. Was about to compost the plant and start again with new seed. now will try to over winter again in the boiler house and hope to get fruit viable fruit from both the seed and plant next to verify heat and isolation worked.

Picture do say a hundred words.

Not going to overwinter anything else. Results for all C,Annum type(s) very good this season.

[Mitzi]

Much happier now that I've seen you harvest picture Mitzi.

You do need to see one and grow one to get a true appreciation of chilli growing. All this time I've been trying to make my Chocolate Hab grow larger pods when it was doing what it should.

This is the plant I over wintered last year (no pods), it had fruit (not viable) in Feb - picked them off and would not set fruit in flowers I'd isolated. moved it to its own house and marked branches, so hope the pots are viable. Was about to compost the plant and start again with new seed. now will try to over winter again in the boiler house and hope to get fruit viable fruit from both the seed and plant next to verify heat and isolation worked.

Picture do say a hundred words.

Not going to overwinter anything else. Results for all C,Annum type(s) very good this season.

I do think my choc hab is a pretty poor specimen with small pods but maybe they are all like that. I'm not really sure.

[IainM]

Mitzi, those aji fantasy and that Rezha look amazing!

[Philthy]

Great post Philthy,
A couple of questions, how much of the plant should be left, ie. 6", 12"? Just the main stem?

The only universal rule I follow when deciding how much to cut away, is not to prune down to a stump . Having hopefully grown the plants to a decent height during the summer, it seems a waste to then cut most of it down going into the winter. With an established framework left mostly intact, the following year those stems will thicken, giving extra height and providing good support for the many more new shoots which can develop along their length. Plus leaving a lot of stem in place insures against the dieback which is inevitable to some degree. You can’t really prune it out if you’ve only got a 6” of plant to begin with.

So to begin with I just follow general pruning advice, removing any stems that are weak, diseased, damaged, crossing, or growing downwards. Then I’ll take off a third to half of the foliage, including all leaves growing on the lower part of the main stem, as these big leaves take up too much space. Then I take what’s left and shape it, though I might take more off the sides due to indoor space limitations.
I expect a lot of the leaves to have dropped off naturally by this point, so of what remains I’ll remove most of them to reduce surface area and help guard against a future greenfly attack, but aim to leave a few at the end that then help me gauge when to water down the line. There’s no need to preserve the old leaves for growing purposes; the plants make new ones when they re-awaken in spring. Think any deciduous tree in the wild.
Pots are kept to 4L in the first year with overwintering in mind; at that size I can squeeze 16 into the space side by side.

[robbra]

Thanks Philthy, that gives me a good idea of what to do with two recently bought plants.
Fingers crossed.
Rob

[Mitzi]

Mitzi, those aji fantasy and that Rezha look amazing!

The fantasy look, erm, well, fantastic. Sadly they don't taste of anything much and have no heat at all. They have a slightly nicer flavour than bell peppers imho and they give a nice juicy crunch to salads. I've also stir fried them. Basically I'm treating them as sweet peppers.

[IainM]

The fantasy look, erm, well, fantastic. Sadly they don't taste of anything much and have no heat at all. They have a slightly nicer flavour than bell peppers imho and they give a nice juicy crunch to salads. I've also stir fried them. Basically I'm treating them as sweet peppers.

That is a shame because I was, erm, fantasising about making a white hot sauce.

[Scarlet]

That is a shame because I was, erm, fantasising about making a white hot sauce.

A white hab maybe?

[Scarlet]

Starting to bring in my plants for overwintering.

First choice is my chocolate hab- it’s grown reasonably well in its first year. 2ft tall and not far off the same width. Some leaves 5-6inches long.
It’s taken ages for the first pods to ripen and those were only picked last week but it’s got over 40pods on there still to pick. Even though it’s probably best to take the pods off I will let it carry on for a few months.





Not the best of photos!

[Small pumpkin]

That looks like a stunner Scarlet.