Beautiful bountiful chilli plants (Chili)

Member Name: londongirl

Product:	Chili
Date:	16/05/09 (278 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: easy to grow, cheap to grow, look pretty and chilli's taste great

Disadvantages: you may end up with loads of plants!

I love Chilli's - I love adding them to food and I love growing them just because they look so pretty!

Last year I grew some Apache and Jalapeno chilli peppers from seedlings that I bought at a garden centre for just 49p each. After about 3 months or so I had lots of chilli's on both plants. I used some in stir fries, i froze some fresh ones and I dried some. They are such a great thing to add to all types of cooking! (As long as you like a little bit spicy!)

This year I grew some chilli's (along with some mini bell peppers) from seeds. I planted them in January and as I had just moved to my own flat I that has no garden I really wanted some plants that I could look after, that would thrive on my window sill and also once the chilli's appear especially if they are the red ones they look great too!

I had two different types of seeds (though one is just called hot thai chilli and came in one of those gift set type things that you get at christmas. My parents bought it for me so i don't know what actually chilli's they are as pretty sure there isn't one called Hot Thai chilli). Anyway i had a variety of little pots - bought a big bag of seed compost and filled up lots of pots with lots of seeds expecting that not all of them would germinate! I was wrong!! I have ended up with about 25 plants and have given some away to people as I just haven't had space for them. It was difficult to keep putting them in new pots wihtout disturbing them too much - one tiny pot i had put about 5 seeds in and all 5 had grown into plants so they were vying for space.

They need a warm dark place to germinate - i have in the past used my airing cupboard but this time i just put them in the pots on the windowsill and covered each pot with a coaster! This meant i could keep an eye on them very easily - worked for me anyway! No need for mini greenhouses or anything special!

I am now left with 9 healthy looking plants and different stages. So only 4 months after planting them i now have 3 chilli's on one plant and some flowers on the others so the chilli's hopefully won't be far behind.

I have found that although people say you don't need to water them that much if they are on a very sunny window sill then they will dry out very quickly. The leaves on mine plants tend to droop if they are really lacking water but theyu always bounce back and seem to be quite hardy plants.

If you pick the chilli's once they are ripe then more will grow. If you leave them on the plant then they will stay there for quite a while but no new ones tend to grow.

They do fine on a windowsill but once the weather is warmer outside you can put them outside on a patio. I don't have that option so love the fact that they seem to thrive on a windowsill.

Once you have picked them fresh chilli's add lovely heat and spice to lots of dishes. Since i got into chilli's i have found i'm almost building up a resistance and need to use more to have an effect on me! Sadly my boyfriend does not like anything spicy at all so this is a bit of a shame!

If you dry your chilli's they will keep for ages and you can either crush them and keep them in a pot of just chop a dried one up when you need it.

A friend of mine also told me to chop up very finely my fresh chillis and chop up some fresh ginger and lemongrass too and put it in a pestle and morter if you wish to make it into a paste. Then freeze little portions in an ice cube tray and you have instant flavouring for stir fries etc that you can just pop into your cooking frozen and it will defrost. Have tried it last year but never get around to actually using it! Seems like a good idea though!

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