Chilli plants make great gifts for the cook or grow your own enthusiast. The more compact varieties will thrive in a cool conservatory, sheltered patio, or even a sunny window sill and the more you crop them the more they produce.

 
Chilli  Planting & Care 

Pot Black Chillies are one of our more unusual chillies with striking black fruit but we now have a whole range including the very productive Superchilli and Apache varieties in stock

One of our most popular gifts, chilli plants are easy to care for if you follow a few basic rules:
1. Chilli plants like sunshine, the more sunlight the fruits receive the hotter they will grow
2. The most common cause of problems with chilli plants is over watering so make sure you only water when the top of the soil is dry to the touch and never let your plant sit in water for any length of time.
3. Chilli plants are not hardy, so in the garden they are best treated as annuals and harvested before the first frosts. Indoors many varieties will over winter with a bit of care.

Caring for your chilli plant

Chilli plants should be fairly easy to care for.

They need to be protected from frost and will do best in a sunny spot out of any cold winds or draughts. A South or East facing windowsill or sheltered patio is ideal

Chilli plants should be kept on the dry side. We see far more problems from overwatering than underwatering. If the soil is allowed to remain soggy, you often see the leaves turn yellow as the roots start to suffocate and eventually the whole plant can shrivel up and die if left unchecked. The rule is therefore to only water when the top of the soil is dry to the touch. That might be once a month in the winter or as much as twice a day in the summer. You can spot when your plant is getting underwatered as the leaves will start to droop quite dramatically. At this point you will need to water straight away but they will perk up again quickly. In fact there is a school of thought that suggests that by watering only when the leaves are drooping you stress the plant into producing hotter fruit!

Chilli plants should be kept in a small pot. They really don't like being overpotted and will suffer from placing in to large a pot too quickly. Most of our chilli plants shouldn't need repotting in their first year, however if you are struggling to keep up with the watering or if your plants is 3 or more times the size of it's pot then you can repot. Just choose a pot that is only 2 or 3cm bigger in diameter and use a good general purpose compost with some drainage.

Chilli plants love sunshine, they originate in South America after all, the more sunlight your plant can get on fruit, the hotter the fruit will become.

Chilli plants are greedy feeders and will benefit from feeding in the growing season. A tomato feed, baby bio or any other high nitrogen feed will keep the leaves nice and green and keep your plant fruiting longer. Apply in line with the manufacturers instructions every couple of weeks from July through to September.