Chilli plant without chillies

[VinceG]

I have three chilli plants in a large pot. The plants have flowered twice but not produced any chillies. Can I do anything or should I give up and try again with a new plant?

[Una]

They are indoors? You will need to cross-pollinate them by hand.

Una

[Billy]

What is the soil and air temperature, and how much light do they get? How much water do they get? You may want to scratch in some bone meal around the plants, and hold off on any nitrogen fertilizer.

Insects could cross pollinate peppers but since it is winter in the UK, that shouldn't be a problem. In general, these should be self pollinating plants. You may try gently flicking the flowers next time, or gently swab them with a Q-tip, going from flower to flower (if they are all the same type of pepper).

[David Hare-Scott]

They are not getting pollinated properly, there is no reason to think that new plants would be different. What has the temperature been like over the last few weeks? Are there any insect pollinators with access to the plants?

David

[VinceG]

Thanks for all your replies people.

The plants are indoors here in the Uk in this miserable winter. There is nothing to polonate them at the moment, so we'll leave them indoors until the summer and will put them outside in the good weather.

[Una]

You can pollinate the flowers by hand. It is a very simple, quick task.

Una

[David Hare-Scott]

I am amazed that they still live much less flower. Is "good" weather when it reaches above 10C or 20C? Chillis are not going to thrive below 20C and will need full sun.

D

[Billy]

My book says 21C - 29C for growing peppers.

Available at a good library near you.

[Billy]

You might look at the advice for growing tomatoes indoors:

How to Grow Tomatoes in your Indoor Garden

They, tomatoes and peppers, belong to the same botanical Family (Solanaceae), and both are heavy feeders.

[Gunner]

Don't know your variety or much on the specific growing conditions but if kept healthy they should flower again when growing conditions improve. Just back off the N a bit, perhaps pinch them back, to keep them from getting too leggy. change up to a higher P when flowering is close and adequate light gets to over 12-14 hrs a day. Blossom drop can be caused by lack of pollination, but also by too high or too low a temp as well as low light and /or short day length light conditions. In your case most likely it is these last winter conditions.

You could try a cooler climate pepper like one of the rocoto or Manzano chiles ( black seed). Google for it. nice meaty chile with a good heat, Originates from cool climate of Peru. You might also try a Plant Growth Regulator (PGR) for fruit set. If you want other plants, take cutting for rooting as you pinch these back, now would be a good time.

I never thought I would ever say billy is right, but he finally got one right when he recommends hydroponics to you. With hydroponoics you can easily ( & quickly) adjust the mineral salts formulary to suit condition and plant as well as stabilize your temps by such methods as root zone heating with an inexpensive aquarium heater.

If you are interested, Google growing Hydroponic peppers (or tomatoes). Dr Lynette Morgan from NZ is a very good source of info and has been known to answer emails.

has additional links to research including one specifcally on peppers:

[Bill who putters]

If the book Collapse is 10 % on target this issue is trivial. Salt will kill Australia. Fresh water and habitat destruction of all minor and potential farming areas. Not good as 20 million living in cities are dependent on run off . Wonder if top down can fix British vision.

Please tell me I'm wrong.

1 square yard of soil contains 200 Lb's of salt.

[Billy]

See:

. . . the Saltgrow, a hybrid gum tree, is being utilized within Australia to try to reverse damage within affected high-salinity areas.[4] The tree has been highly successful, and has been attributed to be able to completely remove salinity within damaged areas and allowed new grasses and shrubs that are not salt resistant, to grow.

[VinceG]

Please could you tell me how to do that? Thank you.

[David Hare-Scott]

It isn't quite that bad. People now recognise that it is a problem and they are starting to do something about it. We actually have a draft plan to rehabilitate the Murray-Darling but it is always possible that short-term populist politics will cause the nation's leaders to go to water (yuk yuk yuk) and vote for a "do nothing" solution. But we have hopes. At least it is being addressed at national level although the Chairman of the Authority resigned in protest. I class him as a mensch so that isn't a good sign.

Not good as 20 million living in

We are working on both top down and bottom up solutions. Many (almost all the small guys) farmers really do want to protect their land and to leave an asset to their children, they just need some support and to learn how to do it differently.

One of the strange things happening is the farmers are discovering that the greens might be allies. This involves a great deal of re-thinking and discarding of old prejudice but it could happen. I would love to be a fly on the wall at some policy framing meetings (why do you want people to be free to smoke weeds?) (you do WHAT with cows!).

You are not wrong but not representing the situation accurately because that's an extreme value It isn't all like that. I could irrigate my pasture daily for a century and not have salinization. Having said that there are large areas that are fairly well stuffed that will take a great deal to rehabilitate.

I would be also concerned about (a) climate change bringing great change, particularly cancelling the winter rains in the WA wheat belt (b) mining and subdivision for McMansions chewing up the good coastal land where there is plenty of water and no salt problem (c) overpopulation.

The last is the proverbial pachyderm in the portmanteau. People cannot understand how a country with such a low population density (overall) can be overpopulated.

David

[FarmI]

I heard a large chunk of a radio interview of an American scientist who was in Australia to study how we dealt with water. Unfortunately I didn't hear his name mentioned in the section of interview I heard. I was quite surprised at how enthusiastic he was about our water plan for the Murray-Darling and our water management in other places round the country. He was so enthusiastic that he was coming back for a much longer study tour, wished that the US was taking such effective action etc, etc,

I suspect that like me, you too would think that Australia still isn't doing enough about water management, so I was very surprised to note such enthusiasm from an outside observer. It made me wonder about the situation in the US. The way he was carrying on about how good Aus was, the US must need attention. Given how many anti-science comments we see from USians into climate change denial, perhaps I shouldn't be wondering about the US or surprised that any country doing anything would jolly up a water scientist.

One thing he said which interested me is that he thought Arizona was going to be in for a very rough ride for water (I cant' recall though if he specifically mentioned Phoenix).

There's sod all support. Most of them who can afford to do anything about it are doing it on their lonesome.

Actually that's not new. The head of the NFF quite a few years ago (and who died suddenly at a young age) had made it very clear that environmentalists and farmers were natural allies. He was working closley with (I think) the ACF and (IIRC) it was on the Snowy River. of course once the NFF chap dropped dead it was back to business as usual and they got a new head who was a denier and a Luddite.

This involves a great deal of re-thinking and

Yup. But it is quite amazing what can be done to rehabilitate land again in some areas. Trees really do work and farmers are planting trees in millions across the country.

Yep.

[Una]

When a flower is open, use one finger to gently stroke its face, as if you were a visiting insect landing on it, then do the same for any other flowers open then, and to finish stroke the first flower again. Your job is merely to pass tiny amounts of pollen from one flower to another.

I would do this once every day or every other day. One second per open flower per day is enough.

Una

[Billy]

"The last is the proverbial pachyderm in the portmanteau. People cannot understand how a country with such a low population density (overall) can be overpopulated."

It's called "under-think".

Who would have ever thought that #9B would be here around 2050 (39 years), and #12B by 2067, so the estimates go. It was only about 70,000 years ago that the human race was reduced to perhaps as few as 15,000 individuals.

Or, maybe you could tell them about jack-rabbits, and Asian Carp (Invasive carp threatens Great Lakes;O)

[Gunner]

Dont follow your logic on "population bottleneck" as your reference says " population bottleneck (or genetic bottleneck) is an evolutionary event in which a significant percentage of a population or species is killed or otherwise prevented from reproducing."

but you can throw cattle, sheep, horses and pigs in the category of nonnative species invasion causing environmental damage.

[Gunner]

"Bill who putters" post appears to gave been pulled or something is amiss. Was there some connection of hydroponics to salinization or misunderstanding of mineral salts? Regardless here is a page of references on salinization that maybe of help in understanding some of the issues about salinization.

I would like to highlight some words Diamond write in the referenced book for those that may tend to overreach or misstate to illustrate their myopic opinion:

"Writers find it tempting to draw analogies between those trajectories of human societies and the trajectories of individual human lives-to talk of a society's birth, growth, peak, senescence, and death-and to assume that the long period of senescence that most of us traverse between our peak years and our deaths also applies to societies. But that metaphor proves erroneous for many past societies ...."

"We shouldn't be so na=EFve as to think that study of the past will yield simple solutions, directly transferable to our societies today. "

so to falsely say that "chemferts kills soil" or simplisticly that BS is the panacea does nothing to address the 12 environmental problems facing mankind today that he outlines.

[Saul Roden]

'The chilli plant is usually fertilised by insects outside, however if you are growing your plants indoors then you will need to use a small pollination brush to gently pollinate new flowers in order to maximize your chilli crop yield.

The pollen the plant produces is usually ready to be picked up by the insect in the late afternoon, so at this time you can pollinate the plant yourself.

To pollinate the plant yourself, take a small clean brush, like the ones used in Watercolour painting. Dampen the brush, pick up the pollen, and gently transfer it to the centre of the flowers on your plant. Repeat this with all the flowers on the plant.' Source: 'Chilli Willy - Full Chilli Growing Instructions for Growing Chillies | Growing Peter Peppers!'

I hope that's some help to you Vince