First year: five plants, one windowsill and far too much water
This was the year I found out that chillies are easy to germinate and hard to grow well indoors. Five seedlings from a single packet of jalapeño seed, started in March on a radiator, moved to 1-litre pots on the kitchen windowsill in April, and watered every evening because that is what I assumed plants wanted. By the middle of May the lower leaves were yellowing and dropping, the compost smelled sour, and two plants had a white crust on the surface. I had been drowning them for six weeks.
The recovery was to stop. I let the pots dry until they were light to lift, which took eight days, then watered only when the top of the compost was dry to a finger’s depth. The yellowing stopped within a fortnight and the plants put on a burst of new growth. They flowered in the last week of June, dozens of small white flowers, and I was pleased with myself for about ten days.
Then the heat. The kitchen reached 31 degrees on the windowsill for four days in a row in July, and the plants dropped almost every flower, leaving tiny stalks with nothing on the end. I did not know then that chilli pollen fails above about 30 degrees and that flower drop is the plant telling you so. Moving them to the floor, where it was 26, stopped the drop but the flush was lost, and the second flush of flowers did not come until mid-August.
Aphids arrived in between, pale green ones clustered on the growing tips and the undersides of the youngest leaves, presumably in through the open window. I rubbed them off with my fingers every morning for a week, then rinsed the plants under the shower, which worked better than anything I sprayed.
The result, at the end of August, is nine ripe jalapeños across five plants, with another twenty or so green ones that may or may not make it before the light goes. The nine weighed 86 grams. It is not much, but each one is thick-walled and properly hot, and I have already decided that next year needs more light, less water, a thermometer and probably a greenhouse. The seeds from the best pod are drying on a saucer.