Growing chili has become a real craze in Sweden.
It’s great fun, and chili plants are fairly easy to grow and rewarding to work with. You just need a bit of patience and to give them a lot of love.
For inspiration on which varieties you can plant, you can also find this year’s chili growing.
When you’ve got your seeds, you’re of course eager to get started growing. The best sowing period is January to March. That’s so you’ll have time to get fruit by summer.
First of all, you need to soak your seeds for about 24 h. This is because they’ve been lying dry for a long period, and to get them started germinating: If you want to boost the process a bit, you can add ¼ tsp of baking powder to ⅓ cup + 1½ tbsp of water when you soak them. This helps dissolve the hard coating on the seeds and makes them germinate more easily.
When you’ve soaked the seeds for a day, it’s time to plant. You can do this in different ways. A propagator can be a good investment. It has very small pots and a lid that helps keep the moisture in.
Otherwise you plant the seed a few millimeters down in lightly moist seed compost; keep in mind that the soil must not be wet but only moist. Pull a clear plastic bag over it to keep the moisture in the pot.
Don’t worry if not all the seeds germinate; it’s quite common not to get all of them to germinate.
Place them in a warm spot. It should be about 77–86°F for your seeds to germinate quickly. No light is needed while the seeds are germinating, but as soon as your little plants peek up out of the soil they need light. In spring and summer it works fine to put them in a sunny south-facing window.
A suitable time to sow your seeds if you want a harvest by summer is January to March.
I recommend some form of supplementary light. It doesn’t have to be anything advanced, just a simple fluorescent fixture or low-energy bulbs. If you want to give your plants a good start, this is a must. Otherwise the risk is that they reach for the light and become long and leggy.
At this stage you should water sparingly; the soil should only be moist. Otherwise there’s a risk of drowning the roots and the plant dies. It’s enough to spray a little lukewarm water with a spray bottle when the soil starts to get dry.
When the plants have developed their true leaves, i.e. the second pair of leaves, you repot the plants into a new, slightly bigger pot. If the plants have shot up in height, you plant them so that the first pair of leaves is just above the soil. Keep the light on the whole time.
Keep in mind that the pots should have drainage. If they don’t from the start, simply drill a few holes in the bottom.
When you repot, you no longer use the nutrient-poor seed compost but switch to regular potting soil, or, as many do, rose soil, which suits chili plants perfectly. Some mix in a little perlite or vermiculite to make the soil more porous so the plants root more easily.
After repotting you don’t need to add any fertilizer until after about 3 weeks.
There are different types of fertilizer; the one I use is Biobact Tomat. It also comes in a chili variant, but I don’t know whether it differs much from the tomato fertilizer. It has worked well for me.
Now you just need to check on your little plants every now and then. Give them lots of love and you’ll surely succeed.
After a while it’s time to repot again. You do this for as long as you feel like it. Keep in mind that the bigger the pot, the bigger the plant. Some plants can get very big.
Pests
Unfortunately, most people run into pests at some point. I tend to get aphids on my plants every now and then. This is easily solved by making a soap-and-alcohol spray solution and spraying where the aphids have attacked. It isn’t harmful to the plant or the fruit at all.
Recipe: How to Grow Chili Plants Successfully