From Seed to Harvest: Growing Green Chilli Pepper At Home

Growing your own food plants is exciting – I never thought I will be saying this one day. But things happen, people change. Who knew, I, who always thought “gardening is cool but definitely not my cup of tea” would be growing green chilli pepper in my little balcony garden one day!

Here’s How I Grew Green Chilli Pepper At Home In A Pot

Just as an experiment, I decided to grow chillis in a pot. So I bought home some good quality green chilli pepper seeds from a nursery. It’s important to get good quality seeds for better results. That, however, shouldn’t stop you from experimenting with the chillis you have in your kitchen, just so you can observe and learn. Mine didn’t yield flowers (and therefore fruit) when I sowed some chilli pepper seeds from the kitchen.

I planted a couple of green chilli seeds in a small box, that I used as a seedling-germination tray. I also had potting mix especially made for growing fruits and veggies with me, and used the same for the seedling tray as well as the bigger/final pot later. The baby plants that grow are too delicate and may not take the transfer well, when moving to a bigger pot later, so you have to be careful. Another way is to sow the seeds directly in the bigger pot in which you wish to grow the chilly plant. But care needs to be taken while watering this big pot as too much water will damage the seed and the young plant.

Green Chilli Pepper plant, growing food plants in balcony garden

The seeds were planted in spring-summer, the spring in India is short-lived, so it was basically the beginning of summer. The baby plants grew within a few days. Very carefully, I transferred them, along with the root balls, to the biggest pot I had at home. I had a good success rate, as 4 out of 6 seeds that I had sowed, germinated and grew true leaves. True leaves are the first, baby leaves on plants. The true leaves look different than the actual leaves, I noticed, for some of the plants. The seedling tray was kept in balcony but in a shaded spot. My balcony is east-facing and gets only morning sunlight, and chilli plant, rather any fruiting plants need a really good amount of sunlight, so I just crossed my fingers as I kept the pot in a spot I felt might work okay.

Within a few weeks, after maybe about a month and half, the chilli plants had grown pretty tall. I didn’t click or lost the pictures from earlier stage of its growth, but the first pic (above), clicked in last June, was clicked after approximately a month and half after I had transferred the seedlings into a bigger pot.

A month after this, tiny, white flower buds started to appear. That was the most exciting part for me, because, the buds meant flowers and eventually fruits will grow (if everything went well without any last minute surprises). The summer that year was nice and warm, so the weather really helped my first ever chilli plant grow. Within another month the flowers started fruiting and I could see a number of tiny green chillies hanging. By the end of July, the chillies have grown longer and were ready to be picked and relished.

Surely, the harvest is not a big one, but it’s worth everything. There’s so much learn, observe and feel good about when getting some soil under your fingernails. For me personally, gardening has proven to be therapeutical time and again. I would recommend everyone to try growing at least one plant – it could be anything – and experience “gardening and happy hormones”. I hardly eat chillies, but eating this chilli that I had grown myself was so tempting, rewarding and absolutely satisfying.