Chilli Help - Withering in the sunlight!

Hi Guys,

This is my first post and I am a total novice so please excuse my total lack of knowledge.

I have decided to grow chillies this year as I love eating them and so far so good, I have 26 plants in total with a mixture of regular chillies, Habanero, Japaleno and Serrano and quite a few are starting to grow buds.

I do not have a green house but I do have a conservatory so have been keeping them on/near the window sill in there. As you know, over the last few days we have had very hot weather and I expected the chillies to love this but every day I come home from work and they look like they are about to keel over and die!! I water them in the morning and my wife gives them a little drink at lunch time but by the time I get home they have wilted and look very sorry for themselves. They perk up as the temperature drops but I am concerned that this is damaging them and could affect the fruit they 'may' produce. I know that chillies like sunlight and heat but as there is no air flow in the conservatory so am I suffocating them?

It does seem that the plants that are away from the window sill are affected less so should I move them from the direct sunlight while the weather is so hot?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I have other queries but will post these later.

Thanks in advance!

Stevie (Novice Chilli Grower)

Reply to
Stevie
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Your supposed to break them in gradually. A little sunlight, a little heat, a little cold. Then more.

Greg

Reply to
gregz

Not knowing your climate makes it hard to say if outdoor growing or behind glass is preferable. Similarly not knowing where you are makes it hard to guess what you mean by "very hot weather" Do you have a figure in mind? Here "very hot weather" means over 40C, YMMV.

What size pots are they in? If you have them in small pots they will suck all the water out quite soon if in the sun and then they will wilt, this is not good for growth as they will not photosynthesise properly while wilted. Chillies need to be in full sun to bloom and to fruit well, this implies having a steady supply of soil moisture as well.

Lack of airflow indoors may produce extreme temperatures but unless you say what the temperature reaches in this conservatory we are all guessing. A common problem with closed environments is that the humidity and condensation encourage harmful fungi which can be very destructive.

David

Reply to
David Hare-Scott

I would be opening windows if it was much hotter than that.

If they wilt every afternoon they are NOT getting a steady amount of moisture and in 5" pots I am not amazed.

You can get plenty of pests indoors too if you are not careful.

Yes of course but what you don't see is that they shut down their metabolism while wilted.

Most plants have small

You are not going to get mature plants with good fruit in 5" pots.

D
Reply to
David Hare-Scott

There are a few plants that produce fruit without pollination but chillis don't. Most edible fruiting plants benefit from insects to do the job (in some cases it is essential) but some like corn are wind pollinated and some will do it any way they can. As best as I can determine chillis will do better with bees to pollinate them but you will get some fruit without. Whether you want to go to the trouble of hand pollinating to make up for the lack of bees is up to you. I grow outdoors and I have more bees than you can wave a stick at so I cannot speak from experience about what happens to chillis without bees.

David

Reply to
David Hare-Scott

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