Greenfly and shed skins on a chilli plant

6 tips on how to spot greenfly

Posted on June 10, 2016 by Jason Nickels

Greenfly, a menace to all, and particularly to chilli growers. Greenfly not only spread disease and drain a plant of its energy they often damage the fruit too. But how do you find them in the early days before they take hold and decimate your plants? Here are 6 tips for early detection.

1/ Look in the new shoots. Although they are commonly found on the underside of leaves, early in the year before the sun gets hot, they get into the tender new shoots where they damage flowers and leaf growth while the are still forming, so look there first.

2/ Use a magnifying glass or zoom in with your phone camera. It is so much easier to find and kill two or 3 today than 300 a week from now. In the picture below you can clearly see two fatties tucked into the new leaves plus a couple of smaller ones. The scars from their bite marks will cause the leaves to be contorted.

Early greenfly infestation on chilli plant

3/ When the sun gets hotter they seem to take shelter. This is when you start to find them lower down the plant among the shady lower leaves. Look for the white shed skins, they are often the most obvious sign of a greenfly infestation.

Greenfly and shed skins on a chilli plant

4/ Look for twisted shoots as they emerge, this almost always a sign of greenfly, not some other disease. The greenfly that caused the problem may have long since been eaten by predators, but it is best to give the tip a spray with an organic insecticide to be on the safe side.

Greenfly causing twisted leaf growth on a chilli plant

5/ Look inside newly forming flowers, if the greenfly get hold before you stop them they will scar the flower tissue and this results in bent and badly formed fruit, more on that here. As soon as the bud starts to open they will get inside. A quick spray with a soapy organic insecticide should do the job, or there are lots in there you should nip the flower off and scrap it. There is no point in allowing the plant to put its energy into growing a malformed fruit, there will be plenty of other flowers.

6/ Look for white shed skins in spider webs or on the soil around the plant. This is the tell tale sign that greenfly are lurking on the leaves above. The shed skins are often mistakenly diagnosed as white-fly when they are just empty skins shed as the greenfly fatten ready to give birth to the next generation.

My Outdoor Chilli Plant Isn’t Growing!

Posted on May 31, 2016 by Jason Nickels

About 3 weeks ago I wrote a piece on moving chilli plants outdoors. It is often difficult to judge when it is OK to do it, and it is always a compromise, it is where I live anyway.

So I thought I’d update people as to what my plants are up to. Generally, I keep all mine in the greenhouse until they grow so big I have no choice, and if any go outside I’m always picky and try to keep the best ones under glass.

This time, just as an experiment I planted one outside on our patio in a stone pot to see what happens. I did this much earlier than I would normally do, but in doing so I was mimicking the dilema which most chilli growers that don’t have a greenhouse. I also put one in a raised bed, and kept the others from the same batch inside.

And after about 3 weeks, here are some results.

The outdoor plant has had some pretty good weather, not perfect, but OK. It has had warm days and cool nights to start with, some rain, a fair bit of wind, and not too much in the way of pest damage, just a couple of nibbled leaves as you can see. But this has still taken its toll, down to 8°c on some nights, some cool winds and a max of maybe 23°c in the day times isn’t ideal. The leaves are curled and quite tough, but mainly the plant has grown slowly, maybe 20cm high and hardly branched out with not many extra leaves, though it is starting to flower.

I stress that this plant hasn’t been neglected at all, it has beeb watered whenever it needed it, fed, staked, and moved about to shelter it from the worst of any wind.

The one in the raised bed (above), has fared better. The leaves have toughened, but not curled much, it has more side shoots and the flowers are more developed. This is because it has been protected from the elements with green mesh around and over the bed too stop the wind and raise the temperature, the soil temperature is warmer and more stable too.

The third one (above), has been kept in the greenhouse all the time, and has grown a lot more. It is taller and probably has twice the amount of foliage than the outdoor one, there are more side shoots, more flower buds and it is looking generally more healthy.

All these plants are the same variety, grown alongside each other until they were separated for this experiment. They are a variety called Nigel’s Outdoors, not one I have grown before, nor one I am familiar with. The seeds came to me as part of a swap I did with Alex the Air-Pot Gardener, a friendly chilli grower here in the UK. I assume it has been bred, (no doubt by someone called Nigel), to be more tolerant to the conditions of my experiment. Other varieties may not have fared even as well as this one. I suspect a similar experiment with habanero plants would have resulted in the outdoor plants not growing at all.

So what is the lesson here?

In temperate climates keep your chilli plants indoors for as long as you can, it will pay dividends.
Don’t expect too much from your chilli plant if you put it outdoors before the warm summer nights and while it is still young and tender.
The outdoor plant won’t grow as quickly and you won’t get as much of a crop.

Watch this space for another update in a few weeks. I suspect we might be picking fruit of the one in the greenhouse.

When can my chilli plants go outside?

Posted on May 13, 2016 by Jason Nickels

Let’s be honest, unless you live in a Mediterranean or tropical climate, you will, like me and millions of other chilli growers, be looking to put plants outdoors as soon as you can because your window, conservatory, polytunnel, or whatever, is never big enough to house all of your chili plants. It is never big enough because we always grow too much, it’s a bad habit.

I grow too much, I don’t need as many as I grow, I give them away, which brings me joy, but still I end up with an overflowing greenhouse and want to move them out into the elements as soon as I can.

So… When is it safe to do it and what special care should you take?

Remember, especially it the UK, it is always a compromise, they will never do as well as they would in the shelter of a greenhouse, but follow these guidelines to give your plants the best chance possible.

1/ My book has loads about temperatures, but just to summarise – If they go below about 18°c they won’t grow (some need even higher temperatures). You needn’t worry about them getting too hot. Even UK record high temperatures will make them jump for joy. Look at the forecast and judge accordingly, they can go cooler at night, but keep an eye on both daytime and night-time temperatures. For me this is, and it is the same most years, about the beginning of May through to early September.

2/ Think about bringing them indoors at night or in cold weather. They will benefit from this protection. It doesn’t matter if you put them in a dark corner, or even a garage, it is night time anyway.

3/ Try and only move established plants outside. Pot on your seedlings into their big pots but let them get established before they go outside. Tender small plants are more likely to get bashed by the wind and rain.

4/ Use big pots, these will keep moisture levels more balanced in drying winds and when the plants get bigger they won’t blow over. They also store heat during the daytime which keeps the roots warm at night.

4/ Protect them from the elements – Put them in sheltered warm spots, try and shelter them from wind as much as possible with trellis or other plants, anything to stop them being bashed.

5/ Stake the plants – Wind causes so many problems, in particular the constant swaying movement which loosens the stem at the base and tears at the roots. Also, use small sticks to support branches when the plants get bigger. Wind is your enemy.

6/ Don’t assume that rain is enough to keep them watered. I can’t emphasise this enough. Think about when you water a plant, you probably give it about 1/2 an inch at least. Very rarely do we have that amount of rain in the summer, especially on a daily basis. A light shower will get the surface wet, but it won’t reach the roots. Also, when they are kept against a wall they may be in a ‘rain shadow’; everything else nearby gets wet, but they get nothing.

7/ Too much rain can be a problem too. During we periods remove any trays from beneath pots so they aren’t sitting in water. If there is a storm forecast, then try and bring them into somewhere sheltered.

8/ Keep feeding them! Outside plants need all the help they can get, and regular feeding will keep the roots healthy and help them withstand the drying effects of wind. Use chilli plant feed or standard tomato feed.

A fairly miserable, poorly fed and bashed chilli plant. (A deliberate experiment!)

8/ Move pots around regularly to search for slugs and snails hidden beneath. Look in the holes in the bottom of pots too. For small plants particularly this will be the biggest and most immediate threat the their existence.

9/ Holidays – If you entrust their care to a neighbour and you only have a few plants, they might get better care if you carry them round to their garden rather than making the neighbour come to you. Reward your neighbour with plenty of chillies, they might get hooked too. Alternatively consider planting them in a self watering system, more expensive, but at least it guarantees they are watered and fed for up to 2 weeks while you are away.

10/ Choose the right varieties – Be realistic, habaneros, scotch bonnets, and most of the super hot chillies need higher temperatures than our climate will give, and a longer growing season too, they really won’t do well outside unless you wait till they are fully grown, and you might not have the space for that. Stick to varieties that grow quickly or withstand harsher weather, Hungarian Wax are picked early, Bulgarian Carrot are very tough, and reasonably hot, Aji (Capsicum baccatum) varieties are also very resilient, with woody stems and small leaves. Apache F1 is nearly always foolproof as it is so quick and also compact, or for something hot and brightly coloured try Twilight.

Chilli Seedlings - From the book 'Growing Chillies'

How cold will my chilli plants go?

Posted on May 5, 2016 by Jason Nickels

We had some unseasonably cold weather in the UK recently, and where I live near the south coast of Devon frosts at the end of April are almost unheard of. But we had some all the same, and it caused a few problems. For me it wasn’t so much the night time lows, but the general cold, when the sun wasn’t out greenhouse temperatures during the day were too cool for plants to grow quickly, so everything is behind.

There were a few touch and go nights though, and towards the end of April I had just too many plants to bring indoors, so they had to run the gauntlet of some near freezing temperatures.

The lowest my max/min thermometer read was -1°c in the greenhouse, but don’t take this as definite. Have you ever browsed the range of thermometers available in a garden centre? Have a close look, last time I bought one the readings on all the thermometers on offer ranged from 18 to 21°c, and they were all hanging from the same shelf! I bought an average one, but there is no telling how accurate it really is. I suspect the temperature didn’t quite reach as low as -1°c, or if it did it wasn’t for very long, maybe only 15 minutes before dawn.

So did my plants survive? Yes, they all did, (not so the courgettes planted outside). And what does this tell us about the lowest temperatures young chilli plants can endure?

My experience tells me that as long as there is no cold wind or rain blowing directly against the plants, which means they need to be in a greenhouse not outdoors, and as long as the cold temperatures only go on for an hour or two, then the air temperature can go down to just 2 or 3°c and still recover happily, but who wants to gamble on a couple of degrees this way or that? And remember this is far from desirable, they aren’t actually growing at these temperatures, as they would if they were bottoming out at 19°c, so warmer is always better.

Another factor that can seriously jeapordise the well being of small tender plants is how quickly they warm up. Generally the soil in their posts will retain a little heat to insulate the roots. The plant might wilt slightly when it draws down fluids into the roots as a reaction against the cold. When the sun suddenly starts to warm the greenhouse then the wilting leaves can’t transpire quick enough to offset the rapidly increasing temperature and the drooping leaves shrivel. In the past I have seen chilli plants looking healthy before sun-up, but two hours later they have died. This is a particular problem where a greenhouse is sheltered from the rising sun and remains cold until later in the morning when suddenly the strong sun peeps over nearby buildings or trees and the temperature rises from nothing to 30°c in a matter of seconds, rather than a gradual warming as the sun rises. This is why instructions on constructing greenhouses always tell you to site it somewhere away from such situations.

Finally, of course, different varieties react differently, tepin, most Capsicum pubescens, (so rocoto), and many aji varieties will be slightly more tolerant than others.

I wish plant sellers would get it right

Posted on April 8, 2016 by Jason Nickels

I wish plant growers would get it right. I saw this in my local garden centre; they took the trouble to make a special label with the name Paper Lantern, but the picture, maybe some kind of Italian long sweet pepper, is almost as far from a paper lantern as you could possibly get. How misleading for new chilli growers is that?

For anyone interested in what a paper lantern really looks like, here is a picture of one.

10 Chillies You Don’t Need to Plant Early

Posted on March 3, 2016 by Jason Nickels

In the northern hemisphere, early March is the time of year some people start to worry about not getting their chilli seeds sown early.

Don’t panic! Planting now is the perfect time, as long as you give them a healthy start and don’t stunt their growth with cold dark conditions they will perform perfectly. Too many people fall into the trap of planting earlier and earlier each year because last year their plants were slow. Change your conditions not your planting time and remember a laboratory grown habanero plant given perfect temperatures, light, food and humidity, will go from seed to fruit in 3 months. Most of us take nearly twice that time to achieve the same, but keep chasing that goal all the same.

But for those that are behind the times and haven’t even bought seeds yet, you still don’t need to panic, here are 10 chillies that will guarantee a bumper crop even if you don’t plant them till the end of March or April. If they are planted in the middle of March all of these bar the last one should bear you fruit by early July, so you see there is plenty of leeway, and they will do most of their growing, and catching up, in May and June when days are long and temperatures warm. For more info on germination times here is a page entry from last year.

1/ Apache F1 – This is definitely one of the easiest; almost foolproof germination, super-quick to grow, and pretty hot too. Its compact size means that it can be kept in a warm window without fear that it will outgrow its space. In the UK buy them from Sutton Seeds or any garden centre.

Apache

2/ Pimento de Padron – This is quick, because the fruits are picked immature and fried to eat whole, instructions on how to grow and prepare them are here. They are very quick growing plants but they do get big, well over 1m tall, so they need the space of a greenhouse or conservatory to prosper. You can buy them from most garden centres or South Devon Chilli Farm.

Pimiento de Padron

3/ Hungarian Wax – These are another one that benefits from early picking, they end up red, but are most often picked when they have turned from yellow/green to a nice yellow banana colour, in fact they are often referred to as banana chillies. They can be chopped into salads or stuffed and grilled. they grow on a bushy plant, up to 75cm high and the same width. All garden centres and online seed sellers will stock these.

4/ Cheyenne – This is a compact plant with a slightly trailing habit so it is great for windows and smaller spaces, even hanging baskets. They are mildly spicy, good for general cooking and turn from green to orange when ready. Most garden centres stock this, or get it direct from Sutton Seeds.

Cheyenne

5/ Bulgarian Carrot – For something reasonably hot, around 25,000 SHU, and great flavour, try this one. They are quick to ripen and grow close to the stems on strong upright plants, this makes them a manageable window plant. They have a distinctive fragrant taste and the fruits are firm and meaty with a long shelf life. In the UK you can buy them from Nikky’s Nursery, but most online seed sellers will have them.

Bulgarian Carrot

6/ Chimayo – This is an old breed, but one that is renowned for an early crop of tasty red chillies. If it is classic looking red ones you are after, but don’t have much time, then this is the one for you. They are incredibly quick, almost as fast as Apache, but the plant is a bit of a rambler so they need some space. If you are into drying chillies and making powder this is a great one to grow. If you buy from the USA you can get them anywhere but in the UK try Nikky’s Nursery (again).

7/ Caldero – This is a Santa Fe, type chilli. Similar in uses to Hungarian wax, but smaller, a bit hotter, and slightly earlier to fruit than the standard Santa Fe. It is also more compact so it serves as a good window plant.

Caldero

8/ Jalapeno la Bomba – You will always need jalapenos however late you plant, and this is quicker than the standard by a few days. In the UK you can buy them from Nikky’s Nursery, if you can’t get La Bomba, try Chichimeca, another quick one.

Jalapeno la Bomba

9/ Prairie Fire – Small hot chillies tend to be slower growing, but not Prairie Fire, they are probably the quickest of the little multi-coloured ones and of the 10 on this list they are the most compact too, so you can keep them in the window into the winter to maximise your crop. They are hot, at least 100,000 SHU which makes them a very quick win in terms of heat against time. You can buy them in most garden centres or online.

10/ Habanero – Paper Lantern – I would steer clear of Habaneros if you are planting late unless you have a warm greenhouse to keep them going into the autumn. But if you want to try it then go for paper lantern, they are a bit quicker than the standard ones and also a little bit hardier with their furry leaves and stems. In the UK get them from Thompson and Morgan but you can find them elsewhere online, particularly in the USA.

Paper Lantern Habanero

Don’t limit yourself to this list, there are many many more and most chillies don’t take that long too grow, just be sure you read the description and don’t overstretch your limits by choosing something that just won’t fruit in time.

Overwintering Chilli Plants – Some practical examples

Posted on February 29, 2016 by Jason Nickels

The overwintering of chilli plants, in temperate areas anyway, is probably the most variable and uncertain part of chilli growing. The most detailed advice is, at best, to be taken with a pinch of salt as there are so many more variables to think about when you compare overwintering with, say, germination. How warm is the autumn? how cold is the winter? where are they kept? what variety? How long are the daylight hours?

So rather than dispensing general advice, which I, and many others have done before, I will illustrate some practical examples of what has happened to some of my experimental plants this winter. For a little bit about what happened to some of my plants back in the autumn you can link to the blog entry ‘When Will My Chilli Plants Die?’.

Where I live near the coast of south Devon in the UK, we have had what is, so far, undoubtedly the mildest winter ever, so I still have a few plants that would not normally survive. This is as good as it gets, and things haven’t been great, so this illustrates the general advice that you should bring any plants that you want to keep into the house where they stand a very good chance of survival. The hardier of my plants were busy fruiting in my greenhouse until Christmas. Up until that point we had only two mornings when there was frost on the ground, and even then the greenhouse temperature only dropped to 3c. Often temperatures were 15 or 16°C and not far of that at night times. It was really really dull and wet though, so I wasn’t hopeful for some plants that I left outside.

Through January temperatures were still warm, and it is only in the last couple of weeks that we have had consistently lower temperatures, but still the greenhouse hasn’t dropped to lower than 1°C.

Despite the warm early winter I am still not surprised to see that most of the plants I tried to overwinter in the greenhouse or outside are looking doomed. There are a few which will survive, but 4 months of short days and just a couple of months of cool temperatures have still mounted up so that only the real hardy ones will live on.

Rocoto, overwintered in cool greenhouse, pretty good.

I had little doubt that this rocoto would survive, they are pretty hardy and this one wasn’t pruned back till January, and at the end of February it is still looking nice and green. It is in a smallish pot in the greenhouse.

Rocoto overwintered in vegetable patch. Very dead!

This rocoto, above, wasn’t as lucky. It was very much an experiment, it grew well outside in a vegetable patch protected by climbing beans all around, but the wet soil and a battering by the wind means it is unlikely to shoot out again this year.

Rocoto overwintered outdoors in pot.

This 3rd rocoto was overwintered outside the greenhouse in a large pot, it is looking pretty good, the stems all nice and green, the soil drains easily and I hope it will shoot out in the spring. I will move it into a greenhouse to give it a kick start.

Rocotos are generally one of the safest bets when it comes to overwintering. The others that do well are the baccatums, ajis, and some of these have done OK in the greenhouse.

Aji. overwintered in greenhouse

The botton aji limon is looking green and healthy, but the one above is dead at the main stem, so I am not hopeful for this one, I think the main stem will rot down and cause the plant to die.

Piri piri, overwintered, good and healthy.

Finally, this is one of my old faithful piri piri plants. This is its second winter, it will stand colder than anything thrown at it so far and I am confident it will do well again this year. The stems are still green up to about 1m high and I have only pruned the straggly small stems to keep it in shape. It is in a big pot, which keeps the roots insulated against sudden drops in temperature, and it is under glass.

I started off hanging on to other plants, either to see which was the first to go, or to test out some new ones. I have never overwintered Carolina reaper before, so I tried that. In the house is OK, but a couple in the greenhouse died back quite quickly. Likewise various annuums they didn’t do well in the greenhouse either and are already in the bin. I wouldn’t normally try keeping these anyway, things like jalapenos don’t perform as well in their second year as newly seeded ones, but as October and November were so mild I hung onto a few.

This last one was an annuum that I did secretly hope would survive, as it would have been great to see it shoot out early. It is a pimento de Padron, and was nearly 2m high in a greenhouse bed, but I’m not sure if it will grow again, watch this space.

Pimiento de Padron overwintered in a greenhouse bed

Hidden Greenfly Damage

Posted on July 1, 2015 by Jason Nickels

Most people know the common reasons why we shouldn’t let greenfly run amok over our chilli plants, they suck it dry of sap and nutrients and they spread disease. One other big problem with greenfly is that they ruin fruit. Malformed fruit is a fairly common problem on chillies and other factors come into play such as environmental conditions, genetics, and diseases, but problems resulting from greenfly damage are often not credited as such because they occur long after the greenfly have gone.

Greenfly on chilli flower

The above picture shows how they enjoy getting their beaks into the soft flesh of a flower, often the flowers and new shoots are the first parts of a plant to be attacked because they are the most tender and succulent. Once this flower opens they will get inside and feed of the reproductive parts of the plant and the tiny chilli before it has even developed. This results in scar tissue from where they pierced the flesh and the outcome is a chilli that is split, or misshaped. You can see this in the picture below.

Greenfly damaged Chilihuacle Negro Chilli

Now the Chilhuacle Negro is an odd chilli anyway, the skin is always matt coloured and leathery, even when it is fully ripe (when it turns brown) and it is never smooth and round, but you can see here that secondary fruits have formed close to the calyx (where it joins the stem). On the right hand one these aren’t even closed, they are split open and you can see inside. Whilst still edible, this will probably start to rot before it ripens, and if you were a commercial farmer it certainly wouldn’t be of a quality that you could sell.

The answer to this problem is that as soon as you see evidence of greenfly, usually the feathery white skins on the leaves below, check your flowers. It is difficult to get at the greenfly inside and crush them without damaging the flowers, so you can use an organic spray, but I think it is best to nip off the flowers while they are young so the plant doesn’t waste its resources growing useless fruit. It will soon grow more flowers,usually they produce many more flowers than fruit anyway, and it ensures you get rid of your greenfly and leave the plant producing a healthy crop.

I have had more problems than usual with greenfly this year, but as documented in a previous blog, by far the worst affected have been the Chilhuacle Negros, these fruits must have come from the first flowers be hit, before I even saw them, and I have picked a few fruits like this now. You can never be too diligent!

Chillies – So what’s with dfferent varieties of the same thing?

Posted on August 30, 2014 by Jason Nickels

Chilli growers hear and talk a lot about different varieties. There are, after all, only 5 main species of chilli and many thousands of varieties within each. But that’s not what I am talking about today. Today I’m dealing with different types of the same chilli, and is it worth paying extra for new and exciting ones, or alternatively spending time seeking out the traditional old ones?

Firstly, I will say that, as a former commercial grower, I think a lot about things like increased yield per plant, uniformity of fruit, and ripening time. But shouldn’t we all? It isn’t necessarily a bad thing; even somebody who only has a single plant in their window would still like to see it produce better, bigger, hotter, quicker or tastier.

So when we go online at the start of the year to shop and dream, we are hit with lots of information. But is the sales patter all true? Phrases like ‘heavy cropper’, ‘bumper yield’, ‘continuous fruiting’ draw us into paying a bit more for a newly developed variety. Conversely, we are also told that looking backwards to old ‘heirloom’ varieties will give us a better flavour, the way things used to be. So is backwards the way forward?

To digress a little, let’s thing about the supermarket tomato. We all know that with tomatoes, what the shops feed us is bigger, quicker and juicier, thinner skinned, but rarely tastier than the ones we grow at home. Tomatoes are grown in such bulk that the growers’ choice of variety has become so influenced by commercial gain that flavour has definitely been sacrificed.

But are chillies affected in the same way? I’m not so sure. Even in areas where they are grown in bulk for a commercial market, increased productivity doesn’t usually lead to a reduction in flavour. Big peppers are different, and they suffer as tomatoes do, but not so much hot chillies.

All these thoughts were prompted by my comparison of two Jalapeno plants last year. They were grown side by side, one was bought as a seedling from a garden centre, grown for an anonymous market at minimum cost. The other grown by me from seed, the variety is ‘Chichimeca’. The results of a comparison are obvious. They both get the same amount of light and plant food, and enjoy the same temperatures, (which were great last summer).

This picture has the first few chillies off of the two bushes, the basic Jalapenos are at the top and at the bottom is my favourite variety, Chichimeca.

From an industry insiders point of view, let me explain why the plants the garden centre supply are inferior. This is down to seed price, and the unfortunate fact that the grower of the seedling is so far removed from the eater of the chillies that they have no vested interest in growing something that will be big and bountiful, and this is such a tiny part of the garden centre’s income (compared to the cafe, imported tat, Christmas decorations, BBQs etc. etc.) that they aren’t too bothered either. Basic Jalapeno seed (probably Jalapeno M) will probably cost the wholesale plant grower about fifty quid for 20,000 seeds, so the seed part of their overhead is minimal. New varieties, like Chichimeca might cost them up to a few pence per seed, and suddenly that would have a knock on effect of the price of the seedling they sell to the garden centre, and therein lies the problem. Most garden centres are price-led, so the results aren’t as important.

You will see another illustration of the difference in seed price if you go to a specialist seed seller online. You might find somewhere that sells a wide range of chilli seeds, possibly a range so huge that making your choice becomes a daunting process. These guys will undoubtedly have a few really cheap ‘loss leaders’ they might even give these packets away for free if you buy enough of something else. But is it worth filling your greenhouse with these plants?

I think there are a few varieties where it is worth paying more for something better, greenhouse and window sill space is valuable and shouldn’t be wasted, and our time is valuable too, so we want to make our space as productive as possible, and preferably without too much effort.

So here are a few varieties where you can really benefit greatly by shopping around to find something a bit better.

Jalapeno – Steer clear of anything advertises simply as Jalapeno, Jalapeno M, or Early Jalapeno. These are older varieties, less prolific, and no uniformity of size, which means many will be undersized and lacking in heat where the seeds and placenta inside haven’t formed properly. Instead go for Chichimeca, Ixtapa, Summer Heat, Mucho Nacho, Tula or Mitla.

Orange Habanero – Instead of the standard variety, go for Chichen Itza; it is earlier to ripen, more prolific and bigger.

Serrano – The standard version is slow to grow, and with very few fruits per plant, instead go for ‘Senor Serrano’ They are Longer, more uniform, quicker and hugely prolific.

Ancho/Poblano – The standard plants can be quite rambling and often only the first few off the plant are full size. Instead try the ‘San Martin Hybrid’ it is bigger, more prolific and stronger more compact plants. Beware of hybrid Poblanos that claim huge oversized fruits. There are some crossed with sweet peppers to give a huge fruit, but they start to lose their distinctive flavour if they are bred too big.

And here are some where you can pick up a bargain that is still prolific and worthwhile.

• Hungarian Hot Wax
• Long Slim Cayenne
• Santa Fe