This is the flower of chilli “pretty in purple”. One of a mixed pack of different varieties I grew this year. I germinated far more than I needed and gave away a box of seedlings to a friend.

She told me last week that her plants had been dripping with super-hot chillis for months now and I’ve had barely a single fruit of my plants, all of which look stunted! They’ve been flowering in the past few weeks but now it’s too late in the year to be likely to result in an abundance of fruit.

A few weeks ago, I popped into my local DIY shed and saw some big chilli plants laden with unripe fruit and flowers reduced from a fiver a go to a couple of quid. I bought one and it’s been fruiting like mad every since. Lovely hot red fruit. I’ve picked a few dozen of them this week and frozen them for the lean months to come.

So, what’s the moral of this? Should I give up growing my own from seed? Is it something in the compost I’ve used or the situation in which I’ve kept them? Is it something to do with watering?

I dunno. I’m baffled. The fact that my friend who took some plants has had a load of fruit suggests the plants were OK so I suppose that means I should rule out the not growing from seed so on that basis then my hypothesis is that mine didn’t like either their location or the compost I used.

Well, I guess that’s something to go on.

I’m not giving up on this year’s plants though. I’m going to try to overwinter them so I can get a head start next year. I’ve brought them all into the house in the hope that we can keep them dry and reasonably warm and that they might respond by living. I’m not trying to get them to fruit over the winter, just to keep them alive so that next year, I can re-pot (with different compost) and try them in a new situation where hopefully they’ll thrive.