Chillies 2021

I find the temperature inside my unheated greenhouse is practically the same as outside overnight. The plants inside are protected against wind chill and rain so certain types of tenderish plants will survive over winter, but not chillies at the moment here.

 

One advantage unheated greenhouses have over outside is ,that now the nights are getting shorter, any day time heat from the sun is stored for a while overnight .
But that's not to say it won't still be pretty close to outside temperatures by dawn.

 

Thanks for the input. I've been fiddling with the heater. The dial only has grooves as settings, no temperatures. I also put a larger fan to run 24/7 in there and it keeps the entire area circulating. On the lowest heat setting, it was 48f when I came down this morning. It is 23f outside.

I'm guessing that in a couple of weeks, the overnight lows will be around freezing so I can then move the onions out of the heated greenhouse, into the unheated ones, and then reload the heated one with my chillies and other "tender" potted stuff.

My indoor area is overloaded at the moment so that is why I'm trying to get things shifted around.

 

48f inside against 23f outside is quite a good difference.

 

Aah thanks @Sian in Belgium I've hopefully salvaged the last few standing and repotted them in fresh compost, and sown some fresh seed as well, so we'll hopefully have some plants even if they're a bit later than usual

 

This morning

 

@CanadianLori You are so good, mine have been sitting under the lamps for 6 weeks now and are still very small. However, we had some proper sun over the last few days and they started catching up.

 

I'm growing two varieties, Hungarian Black (a tall outdoors type) and Basket of Fire, a miniature. Both are now opening their flowers (one each) on the windowsill.

They will be on the windowsill for at least a month and a half and I know the flowers will drop in lack of pollinators. Apparently fruit flies are not very good at the job. So, hand pollination it is.

What do you think will happen if I cross- pollinate some flowers? Any experiences of crossing so different variants?

 

I've not tried crossing chillies, so could be wrong here, I reckon you shouldn't notice any difference in the actual fruit I.e seed pods this season. Only if you grew on the cross fertilised seed will you find variations, I.e next years plants.

 

As regards crossing, I might be wrong, but the flowers are self fertile, so in order to do a definite cross you would need to remove the male parts of the intended seed parent before they start to shed pollen.

 

Thanks JWK and Pete, this is very educational- never knew they are self fertile! Somehow I don't see myself carefully removing the male parts from the flowers with tweezers and a magnifying glass

That somewhat lessens my chances of getting some clean cross pollination to happen. I knew the first year offspring take all the cues from their Mums as any sensible organism would and the hybridisation would show in the resulting seeds.

But if my poking about with a paintbrush does not guarantee cross- fertilisation I'd need an awful lot of plants or very good luck. And the patience to mark any cross- pollinated fertilised flowers for seed collection. Hmmm...

Result- I'll give it a try and see what happens.

Off topic, I remember my Granddad, the incurable experimentalist, tying bits of colourful embroidery strings to mark buds and branches he had meddled with. Then again, it might have been his grafting hobby that sort of got out of hands in a frankenstein way of things. Grandmother was not pleased with the loss of her embroidery material.