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Growing Extreme Hot Chillies · Hydroponics Daily

• 0:00
  Hi, welcome back to Hydroponics Daily. Today I'm talking about growing extremely hot chilli plants.
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  So by this I mean any with a Scoville heat unit of around a million or more.
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  So that is how the hotness of a chilli is measured and it's all about diluting
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  down the extract until you can no longer taste the heat.
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  And so that's how you can compare one chilli to another.
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  Now growing an extremely hot chili
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  is very different to growing a normal say
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  cayenne pepper or a thai chili
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  so like a green finger type
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  chili that's because they are much more
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  difficult to germinate the seeds and
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  have a much longer growing season so makes them perfect for
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  indoor growing and hydroponics so the
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  couple of the varieties you may have heard of the third
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  the most common one is carolina reaper which for
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  many years held the record for the hottest chili and so
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  it's become notorious because of that i think it might have been beaten
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  now by some some other chili called ghost x
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  or something like that but not that one's not commercially available
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  routinely in most countries carolina
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  reaper you can get the seeds of them quite easily but b-h-u-t
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  jolokia is another very hot chili this year i'm growing a very hot chili called
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  big black mama which mainly because i like the name the name of it i just like
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  the idea of giving people big black mamas to try and because it's black it doesn't
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  look like the the ones that.
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  You would be extremely hot so it's a cross
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  of naga marich and douglas seven
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  pod anything with naga butt carolina
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  reaper is going to be x
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  ghost these are all really hot chitties and there'll
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  be lots of hybrids of that you'll notice there's
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  not just the they're small and red they'll have this
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  what's described as gnarly appearance to the surface
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  of the skin i think it looks a bit like cellulite but
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  don't tell my wife i said that it's so
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  the the key issues
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  with growing really hot chilies extreme
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  heat is that they are very slow to germinate and you need to keep them very
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  hot so 21 to 32 degrees celsius at least this means that just putting them in
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  some compost and put them in a outdoors or in a greenhouse is not going to
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  do it really in most locations certainly not here in the uk you'd
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  be waiting a long time for those seeds to germinate and so
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  and this the germination even when you give them the ideal conditions it still
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  takes a long time and that's why growers tend to chemically scarify normally
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  with hydrogen peroxide so you get three percent hydrogen peroxide and do a 30
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  to 1 dilution and you could do there are other methods of scarification which
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  we've talked about on previous podcasts.
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  And the the key advice I'd give you is
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  to start early so you probably
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  missed the boat now in the UK for growing the really extreme ones outdoors you
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  would really only be growing the standard chilies outdoors now and but if you're
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  growing them indoors that's that's no issue and hydroponics is perfect for this
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  because you don't need to worry about the length of the growing season you You
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  can just grow them until they're ready.
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  What I found as well with starting, so I started all my big black mammoths off
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  indoors and then transferred them out this week into my greenhouse.
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  And I found that not only did it start them off early and mean there was no
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  chance of cold temperature damage, I'm not talking frost here,
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  they'll get damaged when they go below five degrees Celsius.
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  Another advantage of starting them off early in an indoor growth room was that
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  they were much squatter.
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  And the internodes, that means the internodes were very, very closely,
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  very short and very compact plants.
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  And that's because the LED grow lights I was using are designed to keep plants squat.
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  There's no far red in there. So if I'd been growing them, that might've been
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  an issue if I was going to keep them in there.
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  And they might be too squat to produce a
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  good canopy and the leaves might be too close together
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  might have ventilation issues and this could cause issues
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  with pest and disease so if you were growing them indoors and
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  you were producing really squat plants then the
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  thing that you would look at there would be getting some far red
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  lights in get some far red lights which will trick the plants into thinking
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  they're shaded and they'll start increasing the length of those internodes and
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  producing a much taller plant these really hot chilies normally grow to about
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  one meter at all if they're grown outdoors so not a small plant.
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  Think they have determinate growth so they they stop growing after a while whereas
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  the the tomatoes I'm growing I'm growing tigerella tomatoes which are indeterminate
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  growth and they'll just keep on,
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  flowering and fruiting and they won't stop growing
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  taut they won't go taller unless you pinch them out
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  so you can get tomatoes with determinate growth and
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  indeterminate growth but these extreme chilies I'm
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  pretty certain are they have determinate growth so as
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  I say a bit of scarification they'll take a
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  long time to germinate you'll need a heat mat or a very hot
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  grow room and then you'll
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  you'll get your seedlings and then you'll pot them up and
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  you'll pot them up progressively to the size of pot you eventually want them
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  to be into and obviously like many other plants the the size of the container
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  will have a massive bearing over the actual size of the plant you get eventually
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  so small pots small plants don't over water them so if you're growing in cocoa or soil or compost.
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  These plants really don't like being over watered if
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  you're growing in a hydroponic system you might want to choose something
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  like an ebb and flood system where they they
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  don't get flooded very often or as
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  often as you would a normal let's say a tomato plant which loves you
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  know you just tomatoes you're just throwing water
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  at them irrigating them whereas chilies really hot chilies
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  you're not throwing water over them you you want
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  to keep them on on the edge of dryness rather than the edge of wetness and
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  then just like tomatoes because they're in the same family you do want
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  to pollinate them make sure they're pollinated if you've got a stagnant grow
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  room then the flowers will stay still and
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  they won't get pollinated so give the plants a shake a gentle
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  shake and that will well that will make sure they're pollinated they're self-compatible
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  so the flowers will pollinate themselves but they won't
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  get pollinated if they just stay there still a couple
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  of other things to consider whitefly and aphids will
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  be two key pests when growing chilies
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  that you wouldn't with certain other hydroponic crops whitefly loves
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  chilies as do as do aphids and they are
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  fairly easy to control with an insecticidal spray
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  you don't need to have get any
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  fancy insecticides the
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  chilies are quite happy to receive a dose of
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  insecticidal spray every now and again obviously that's not
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  a preventative that's just a curative one but you
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  don't want to be putting insecticides onto chilies that you're going to
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  eat anyway so don't worry about that ventilation is key.
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  As we talked about in the past these are simple leaves.
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  Not compound leaves so the the air won't move around them naturally when the
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  light comes down onto them they they need good airflow to get that that stale.
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  Air that's low in co2 high in oxygen humidity away from the plants and refresh
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  it so that's going to be key some other key issues.
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  You're going to want to label all your plants if you're growing different varieties
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  because just like any other plants especially expensive
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  plants like this you can quickly forget which
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  one's which and they look pretty much the same until it comes time to harvest
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  and even then a extremely hot chili can look a lot like an extremely mild chili
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  and vice versa so labeling is key in chilies unless you want to have serious
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  issues if you're not used to extreme heat.
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  And you want to build up your tolerance to those extreme heats,
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  maybe, before you just jump in with a Carolina Reaper.
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  And one of the reasons I like to grow extreme chilies is because shop-bought
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  chili is so disappointing.
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  And you can buy a Carolina Reaper sauce here in the UK that should be prosecuted
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  under the Trades Descriptions Act because it's extremely mild.
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  Loads of the chili sauce that say really, really hot are extremely mild in my eyes.
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  And then I love Chinese chili oil.
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  I've been to China a few times and I love the chili oil you get there,
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  sometimes called onion oil for some reason.
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  But I had a really bad experience once. I went to a Chinese supermarket in
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  Leicester and I bought the the most popular brand
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  of chili oil and it had a pork
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  bone in it pork rib bone inside it and
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  i thought oh my god the food standards in that
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  factory must be appalling so i make my own chili
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  oil now i get i get carolina reapers and
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  i put that in hot oil with a load of
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  chili from the korean supermarket big bag
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  of mild chili powder and and then put the oil in myself and make my own chili
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  powder so chili oil sorry and so i know exactly what's gone in there i know
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  i know the carolina reaper's gone in there and the oil's gone in there and i
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  know the sort of mild chili chili flakes have gone in there as well so you can
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  get big bags of mild chili flakes.
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  For you know a few pounds it makes it extremely cost effective to make your own chili oil,
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  so i'd say i'm growing big black mamas this year and they
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  they're not flowering yet whereas my tomatoes are flowering but
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  hopefully we'll get a crop before the end of
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  the season and i'll be able to report back we've got six plants
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  and my colleague matthew's taken one at home as well
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  to try so yeah if you've got
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  any top tips for growing extremely hot chilies then
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  let me know and if you've got any experiences and um any other plants you'd
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  like to be featured any any tutorials you'd like on a specific plant type let
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  me know all right that's been hydroponics daily for today please click that
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