Growing chilli plants is easy, so long as you can provide them with warmth and water you’ll get a rewarding result. Here’s a basic guide on how to grow chilli plants.

Sowing Seeds

Most chilli seeds should be planted in early Spring (around March). Depending on the variety of seed you’ve planted, it can take around 3 to 5 months to get a fully matured plant.

You can sow the seeds in small pots with about 2 seeds in each one. Or you can use a seed tray and use each individual space for one seed. Fill the pots with good quality compost first, drop in your seeds then cover them with a thin layer of the compost and gently water each pot.

To germinate, chilli seeds need warmth. If you’re into growing your own vegetables you might want to invest in a cheap electric propagator to help things along. Otherwise, you could cover your pots with cling film and place them in a warm place such as an airing cupboard.

Once a few seedling appear, they will need lots of lovely sunlight so move the seed tray or pots to a sunny indoor position. Each day, make sure the soil is moist but not soggy – you should not need to water them everyday so check first.

Potting Seeds

When the seedlings have two or three sets of leaves you should transfer them to larger pots. Be very careful not to disturb the roots as best you can.

Fill a pot with compost and water. Make a hole in the compost big enough to take the roots and support the stem. Carefully put the seedling into the pot then cover and firm with more compost. You can put enough compost to cover the stem up to the first set of leaves – the plant can develop more roots out of the covered section of the stem for more stability.

Conditions

Chilli plants are big fans of high temperatures and sunlight. They should really be kept indoors (or a greenhouse if you have one) unless you live in a warmer climate. I tend to keep mine indoors until they are around 10 cm tall and the nights are 10 degrees Celsius.  Then they live in a small, plastic greenhouse type thing.

You’ll need to regularly water the plant but be careful not to drown it! You want to prevent it from drying out, not to keep it soaked.

Flowering

When your plant starts to flower you’ll have edible chillis very soon. Some people recommend pollinating by rubbing the middle of the flowers to move the pollen to the stamen which will allow the fruit to grow.

You might not need to do this as some insects will be nice enough to help out. However if your plants flower but do not fruit, I recommend taking a small paintbrush and rubbing the pollen on to the stamen on each of your flowers.

When the flowers fall off, don’t panic! The chillis are on their way – pushing through the flower bud.

If you want to give your plant a bit of a boost, you can use a small amount of tomato feed at the flowering stage. This will help the plant produce healthy, tasty chillis and keep it going longer over the summer.

Harvesting

You can harvest your chillis when they’re large, firm and green. They’ll ripen up even after you pick them. Or you could wait for them to turn into their mature colour – just because it makes the plant look pretty!