Comradeship // Freechat

I've been nursing a chili pepper plant (several actually) from seeds I brought back home. It's going on its third year and produced lots of fruit in the second year, though they tend to be smallish (I think they could become bigger). I think I got some fruit from the hardiest stems in the first year, some of them grew really big and others are slowly dying. I didn't know how many seeds I needed to plant so I just chucked a bunch in a pot and months later I have 11 stems growing lol.

The great thing about chili plants is they're hardy af and don't really have predators, since capsicaine is their defense mechanism. Really easy to take care of, it's like there's no such thing as too much or too little water for these plants.

Your plant is probably going to give more fruit next year. You can also add more stems to the pot like I did with mine, but I really only have two plants giving fruit. Harvest the peppers while they're still green once they've reached an ideal size or size they don't seem to grow out of, and let them ripen in a sunlit area. You need to harvest the fruit for the plant to make more. Don't touch the flowers.

I want to try NPK fertilizer but I'm otherwise a terrible gardener lol and it feels daunting to use the thing. I just give it water and while it likes having a lot of it, I find that I don't have to give it all this water, it can also go several days without water (apparently it makes the fruit more spicy as well). Right now it's inside for winter and so it's not producing any fruit, but once I put it back outside when it becomes warmer at night it'll start producing tons of flowers. It comes from a country where there is no such thing as winter so it could totally grow fruit year-round.

Dry the peppers in the oven btw if you don't use them instantly. They're not like store-bought peppers and will rot very quickly. Just chuck them in the oven at 50-60C for 2-3 hours (yes, ovens go that low). They should still retain a little bit of humidity and not turn to dust when you pick them up. I cut them up beforehand so that I can harvest the seeds (even though they're the spiciest part), so that I can hopefully plant those later. No idea if they're fertile. You need to dry the seeds too, but it's much easier, just leave them spaced out on a plate for half a day.