Growing Chillis Part 4: Watering and Feeding
Feeding and watering your chillis is a lot easier than you might think as chilli plants are quite hardy.
Chilli plants like the soil to be moist but well drained so to get an idea for how moist the soil is, i usually stick a wooden bbq skewer into the soil and see how damp it comes out.
When watering try not to get water on the leaves or on the bottom of the chilli plant stem, this just helps keep the plant in tip top condition and stops the leaves or stem rotting off.
If the soil does dry out and your plants go droopy or shrivel up, don’t panic as there is a good chance that you can resuce them by giving them a good watering and leaving for a few hours.
Feeding Chilli Plants
When your chilli plants start to flower, it’s time to start feeding them.
This is one of those cases where different people will tell you different things, i like to use tomato feed and water it down a bit so that its not too strong. I then use this to feed the plants every 3rd or 4th water depending on the weather….if its hot they get watered every day so i tend to feed them every 3Â or 4 days.
Once your chillis have flowered they will start to fruit, a bit more about fruiting will be posted soon.
It’s also worth keeping an eye out for bugs and pests, ill post some more on that soon too.
August 25th, 2009 at 21:14
great article! my chillies have gone yellow – do you think i am over watering them?
August 26th, 2009 at 09:02
Glad you like it, have the actual fruit gone yellow or the plants? if its the plants, try to give them as much light as possible, let them dry out a little then start feeding them every couple of waters with a weak tomato feed.
if it’s the actual chillis then it could well be the fruit ripening.