Back in March, I challenged the members of my local gardening club to a chilli challenge.
All were given a packet of Chilli ‘Numex Twilight’, my favourite chilli for windowsill growing – it’s a manageable size for indoor growing, and at its peak you end up with a rainbow of decorative chillies that will get the admiration of anyone visiting the house.
I set two classes for the challenge – most number of chillies on one plant, and the healthiest looking chilli plant. To level the playing field I provided everyone with a stash of 2 litre pots and the plants had to be grown in these. Other than this they had free reign on compost choice, fertiliser and training (staking, pinching out, etc).
Last Saturday I joined everyone at the local village hall for the end of season flower and produce show. I had been looking forward to seeing how everyone got on, but on Friday evening it suddenly hit me that I’d potentially given myself a really big task. “Why on earth did I choose most number of chillies as a category!?” I had visions of me being there all day, constantly losing count and starting again.
So as I sheepishly entered the hall I was relieved to see ten plants for judging with varied crops of chillies on them.
All the plants had chillies that I would easily recognise as Numex Twilight, but it was interesting to see the variation in habit and size. One reached well over 3½ foot while another wasn’t much more than 18inches high. Most had the small leaves expected of the variety while one or two had large leaves rivalling sweet pepper plants.
Lowest chilli count was 1 (an easy job for me!). Yet I awarded this plant third place in the healthiest plant category – lush foliage with plenty of life left in it for cropping through winter.
The heaviest cropping plant had 203 fruits on it, although none of them had yet ripened. The plant looked so healthy too, that I also gave it 1st place in the second category.
Judging was carried out in the morning, I then returned for the open show in the afternoon, bringing with me my best Numex Twilight plant to show the rainbow of colours that everyone could expect from their plants. Winners announced, I was called on to read out the raffle winners, many of whom went home with Thompson & Morgan seeds for sowing next season. Winners of the chilli categories received seeds of my 10 favourite Thompson & Morgan chillies plus a book on chillies kindly donated by another member.
I received many a compliment for my chilli plant (admittedly grown in larger pot, but fed just once back in June).Returning home I decided to make a feature of it in the kitchen. Setting it alongside my chilli chain – a mix of chillies picked from my plants, all strung together with a needle and thread (the needle goes through the stalks so the fruit is undamaged). These are then hung to dry out ready for a long life of varied uses in the kitchen.
I hope you are all doing as well with your plants. I’d love to see how you are getting on, post your photos on the Thompson & Morgan Facebook page.
Find more chilli articles, growers guides and a few tasty recipes at our chillies & sweet peppers hub page.
Kris Collins works as Thompson & Morgan’s quality control manager, making sure customers new and old are kept up to date on the latest plant developments and company news via a wide range of media sources. He trained in London’s Royal Parks and has spent more than a decade writing for UK gardening publications before joining the team at Thompson & Morgan.
The Scoville scale has been the standard measure of chili heat for over a hundred years, but a rating of 750,000 or 1million+ SHU doesn’t mean much to the average gardener, other than its likely to blow your socks off! Looking to simplify things and give customers a better informed choice, Thompson & Morgan has rated all 
A lack of heat is often down to treating the plants too well during the growing season – the heat in a chilli is the plant’s defence mechanism against environmental stress (drought and excessive sunshine/heat) and hungry animals munching on the plants in the wild – interestingly only mammals are affected by the heat in chillies, birds and reptiles can eat them with no ill effect.
The first tip to hotter chillies is to allow a good drying period before each watering, even letting the plants wilt for half a day or so before giving them a good drink. I did this earlier in the week, As you can see, having let the plants droop, they soon picked up after a good watering. Don’t do this too many times as it will eventually weaken the plant and have a negative effect, but 3 or 4 times through the season should get the results you want without long term damage to the plant.
The trick to success with chilli sowing is to keep it simple. I’ve tried all sorts of sowing methods, from expanding coir pellets and thermostatic controlled propagators to expensive home hydroponic systems – but what method has given me quick high-yielding results this season?
The Grow Diary of a Chilliholic – January 2015
Why I love cooking with chillies
Why I love growing chillies