Quote:
Originally Posted by Bob Hobden
"wafflycat" wrote
Got loads of different varieties of hot chili & sweet pepper plants in the
greenhouse. Lovely plants. Look very healthy. Plants standing upright,
bushing out. Leaves lovely & green. Loads of flowers. BUT, once flowered,
no chilis or sweet peppers forming. The flower withers, also the small
stem it is on withers and then the entire thing drops of the plant. So it
would seem no pollination? Do I need to get in there with a paintbrush and
pollinate by hand?
Sounds like it, or leave the greenhouse door open.
We always grow our chillies out on the allotment so don't have a pollination
problem but it does seem that it takes a while for the plants to start
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There isn't a pollination problem with chillis (and sweet peppers are a kind of chilli). They are usually perfectly good at pollinating themselves without assistance either from insects or paintbrushes. People wanting to get true variety seeds put insect-proof nets over their plants to stop the insects cross-pollinating them across varieties, and they still get fruit. I've also heard of people putting glue on the end of the flower just before it opens.
Misting the plants is supposed to help fruit set. Other problems could be over-watering (they are happy to get fairly dry and a bit limp between waterings - they don't need as much water as tomatoes) and giving them over-nitrogenous feed - use tomato feed.