2018 Chilli Growing thread

Soldato
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Aji Limons are delicious to cook with! Only had one of mine ripen so far - I'm hoping that moving them all outside will help with flower fertilisation and fruiting. My new plants are late to the party this year, but with the hot weather continuing I'm hoping that they'll get large enough to start fruiting before the weather starts to get colder. Not sure whether I'll be taking these ones inside or just growing again from seed next year... will see how they go I guess!
 
Soldato
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I just picked a load of Aji Limon peppers this morning. Got a big bag in the freezer as I wasn't sure what else to do with them. Despite lots of the leaves yellowing and falling off its still cropped well, more than any of my other plants. I'm quite impressed! I often add them to stir fries, but are there any other good uses? Are they just like red peppers where you can add to pretty much anything to add some heat?

Is there any point drying them, or are they better used fresh?


Also looks like my Ancho has decided to flower again after i harvested the peppers. I think it might be a bit late now unless we have an extended summer.
 
Soldato
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I just picked a load of Aji Limon peppers this morning. Got a big bag in the freezer as I wasn't sure what else to do with them. Despite lots of the leaves yellowing and falling off its still cropped well, more than any of my other plants. I'm quite impressed! I often add them to stir fries, but are there any other good uses? Are they just like red peppers where you can add to pretty much anything to add some heat?

Is there any point drying them, or are they better used fresh?


Also looks like my Ancho has decided to flower again after i harvested the peppers. I think it might be a bit late now unless we have an extended summer.

I like to use them in pretty much everything! I really like the citrus/lemon flavour that they impart. Very good in an arrabiata sauce for example. Smoky bacon, tomato, basil and aji limons! They work very well in Indian cooking if you want a fresher taste. Chicken Kadhai (Madhur Jaffrey) is super easy (30 mins) and if you use the Aji Limons at the end it makes the dish awesome.
 
Associate
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so far only had a boat load of jalapenos. made up 2 1ltr jars of green jalapenos to pickle last night. Had to take the biggest ones off as the plants got top heavy full of fruit and I have a garden prone to strong winds :(

Going to keep eating jalapenos fresh off the plants till they stop at end of summer as they're so easy to throw on pizza or chips and snack on. Keeping the rest till fully ripe and red. If I have too many of the red ones I'll pickle them as well.

Ring of fires are starting to ripen up and aji limon's have a good amount of fruit on them but not as many as i'd hoped. Aji's suffered with yellow leaf even though the plants otherwise seems very healthy
 
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Yeah literally had no other problems with them and as you say nearly all the yellow leaves were the largest leaves so likely just shedding them for new growth.

Anyone else still keeping their plants outside over night, noticed temps dropped quite a bit this past week. Not sure if it'll cause the plants to go into winter mode too soon
 
Soldato
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I may have made a mistake labelling my chillies at some point and appear to have a mystery chilli that I can't remember planting. The mystery one has smallish upright orange chillies. When I ordered my seeds, they sent me a free pack of kitchen pepper seeds so I planted a few as I thought I'd use some peppers in cooking. However, thinking it was a pepper, I picked one and ate it last night. Turns out it was not a pepper.. Now I'm not sure what it is as I planted kitchen peppers but don't appear to have any as all my other plants are accounted for! It maybe an orange hab as it tasted similar but all my other habs grow downwards not upright.

mwgDfHIl.jpg

My other plants are doing well and I've got basket of fires and habs coming out of my ears. Even my Reapers are starting to ripen now. I might have to fire up the dehydrator this weekend and dry a load out for storage.
 
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Im going to try an experiment with my 2 zimbabwe black plants.
As I was getting low on tomato feed I decided to check the price of Chili focus, picked up 5l for £20 delivered

So I am going to feed one on tomato food and the other on focus. As I plan on keeping them indoors over winter if possible they will have a long sustained life :)

One is very slightly smaller than the other, so the smaller one will get the focus. I would say its cropping as much, just the plant is about 5% smaller.
If focus does indeed beat tomato food then to me this one should at least match the other in height and also should produce more crop.

At that price though I thought even if its not really any better its only marginally more expensive then I pay for tomato food.

Hurdle 1 will be getting the lid off. People complain its nigh on impossible, we will see!
 
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I may have made a mistake labelling my chillies at some point and appear to have a mystery chilli that I can't remember planting. The mystery one has smallish upright orange chillies. When I ordered my seeds, they sent me a free pack of kitchen pepper seeds so I planted a few as I thought I'd use some peppers in cooking. However, thinking it was a pepper, I picked one and ate it last night. Turns out it was not a pepper.. Now I'm not sure what it is as I planted kitchen peppers but don't appear to have any as all my other plants are accounted for! It maybe an orange hab as it tasted similar but all my other habs grow downwards not upright.

mwgDfHIl.jpg

My other plants are doing well and I've got basket of fires and habs coming out of my ears. Even my Reapers are starting to ripen now. I might have to fire up the dehydrator this weekend and dry a load out for storage.

Could be its cross pollinated?

Must admit they do look like my baby peppers as well, but I haven't tried picking one.
 
Soldato
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Could be its cross pollinated?

Must admit they do look like my baby peppers as well, but I haven't tried picking one.

It won't be a result of cross pollination this year. A cayenne seed from a cayenne packet of seeds will produce a cayenne pepper, regardless of what other pepper it is pollinated with. However, if you then collect the seeds from that cross pollinated cayenne, and grow them the following year, you may find that the pepper may differ from the cayenne you would expect.

The seed used to row the plant may have come from a cross pollinated fruit from a previous year though?
 
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Yeah sorry now I read it back I wasn't very clear.

I have had a few of these very generic type packets before, I wonder if they are from a fairly large uncontrolled environment hence the chances of pretty much anything popping up

Large growers work hard to prevent cross pollination and keep strains pure, but my suspicion is these sorts of packs are just uncontrolled large groups with anything thrown in.

I planted a pack of patio peppers and got some random stuff that never even looked like a pepper a few years back :)
 
Soldato
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Yeah sorry now I read it back I wasn't very clear.

I have had a few of these very generic type packets before, I wonder if they are from a fairly large uncontrolled environment hence the chances of pretty much anything popping up

Large growers work hard to prevent cross pollination and keep strains pure, but my suspicion is these sorts of packs are just uncontrolled large groups with anything thrown in.

I planted a pack of patio peppers and got some random stuff that never even looked like a pepper a few years back :)

That was my thinking too. They'll still get used, I was just a bit shocked when I ate one and it wasn't what I was expecting and was interested in what it could be.
 
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