I’ve mentioned a few times that i’ve recently moved house. In my old place I only had a small yeard, surrounded by tall houses and a large tree which meant that it was shaded for most of the day. As a result the growth rates of my chillies was slow and I relied on gro lights to get my plants started early and up to size early enough in the season to allow me to get fruit by late summer. To help keep the plants warm I used cheap mini greenhouses to maximize their growth.
Luckily I now have a bigger garden before which is south facing so it gets plenty of sun. In addition it has a summerhouse/conservatory which I have been able to take over a section of to house my plants. Needless to say the this has now become known as the chilli house. As it is double glazed it retains much more heat than the cheap greenhouses I used to use. To help avoid over heating I’m opening the windows and leaving the door open during the day and closing everything up at night time.
I’ve been amazed so far at the speed of growth the plants have put on with the extra light and heat they are getting within the chilli house. As a result, the plants are needing much more watering, usually twice a day when the weather is hot. Also the extra space will prove very useful at the end of the summer as I intend to try to over winter all of the plants I have grown this year.
I was amazed to come back from 3 wet and windy days away to find that Leeds has been mega sunny and my chilli plants have shot up about 8 inches.
Even the slow growing scotch bonnets are now monsters.
Ben – Glad to hear they are doing well! It is amazing what difference a spell of good weather makes.