apache chilli peppers

smokingspursboy

Hi all, i bought a chilli pepper plant in my local lidl. it was only a few inches tall then but its almost a foot tall now. it has lots and lots of small white flowers and appears healthy but the flowers just die and fall off with no sign of fruit. more flowers do appear in a couple of days and the same happens to them. it said on the plastic tab that it should fruit after 75 days.......so can anyone tell me is this normal and when should i see signs of peppers starting to grow!!!!!! ( i did put it in a much bigger pot after i got it!!!! )

sharonl

Sounds like the flowers are not being pollinated. When they are out in the wild chilli plants are pollinated by insects, so maybe you need to give them a helping hand if they are indoors. Take a small paintbrush or eye shadow brush and tickle the inside of a flower lightly, then move from flower to flower on the plant tickling each one and transferring the pollen to the next flower. By doing this you are in effect fertilising the flowers to signal them to produce fruit. Should work, Its similar to tomatoes, if they are indoors and there's no wind or insects you need to do the job yourself. Good luck!

sharon

smokingspursboy

thanks sharon, its simple once its pointed out. plant has 6 or 7 fruit on it now and is still flowering

sharonl

Good stuff, my own apache chilli plants are setting fruit now aswell. As long as you keep fertilizing the flowers you should get chillies all summer long:) so you better come up with some recipes to use them. I've been told they freeze very well whole and you can just take em from the freezer and chop us as you need them. Should keep you in chillies for quite some time yet. Happy growing!

sharon
www.plot103.blogspot.com

EvilMonkey

Dose it make a difference if you have different varieties will they only pollinate their own variate?
No flowers yet but their coming

sharonl

Apparently chillies will cross pollinate with other varieties and bear true fruit but the seeds may not give rise to the same variety but could be a mix of the two and are unpredictable if you plant them. If your planning on keeping seeds for next year from your plants best to stick to pollinating flowers from the same plant only and segregating the different varieties. Chillies self pollinate so you don't need flowers from a different plant to get fruit. You can just go from flower to flower on the one plant. Although if you have two varieties you like it could be an interesting experiment to see if you can get a hybrid next year from the same seeds:D Not sure how successfull it would be though:rolleyes:

sharon
www.plot103.blogspot.com