The Chilli situation

After languishing sulkily in the cool, wet, grey conditions for week after week, the Chillis have "sat up with a jolt" as it were, and have made the most of the hot dry weather these last few days. All of a sudden several of them are showing signs of red colour!

This one is "Hot Portugal" whose fruits are fewer but a lot bigger than they were last year.

And this is "Fuego F1"

The chilli plants are all very "compact" this year - considerably shorter than I would have expected. The bamboo support canes I provided them with have proved to be far too tall!

The leaves are all a bit sickly-looking too, I think. More yellow than green. This is probably because of my deliberate policy of not feeding them, which I have adopted in order to try to get them to concentrate on producing fruits rather than leaves.

With the advent of some sunshine, lots of the flowers (which had hitherto been falling off before setting) are now setting with a vengeance. See if you can tell how many chillies there are in this picture...

The most disappointing of my four types of chilli is "Amando F1", which is only just producing its first fruit. Maybe it will do better now that things have warmed up.

The plants I grew from seeds brought back from Turkey are perhaps the ones which could most readily be forgiven for doing badly. They would normally expect temperatures of 45C or so, I reckon. My two have developed into very bushy plants:

But so far I have only spotted one single fruit. (This one is currently about an inch long).

Maybe more will come soon, after our recent spell of hot weather. It's surely not too late yet?