Cayenne

Why it suits Ireland

Less well than the others here, and it is worth being straight about that. Cayenne must ripen fully to be worth growing, and full ripening plus drying is exactly the part of the season Ireland is short of. A cayenne sown in April will give you a plant covered in green fruit in October and nothing in the jar.

What makes it worth the trouble anyway is that nothing else replaces it. A jar of home dried chilli flakes from your own plant lasts a year, and one good plant produces enough for a household.

Treat it as a January or February sowing with a grow light, a greenhouse or polytunnel place all summer, and no move outdoors at any point. Done that way it works reliably in Ireland. Done casually it does not.

Growing notes

Sow in January or February with bottom heat at 25 to 30C and a grow light from the moment the seedlings appear. Hot varieties are often slow to germinate, so allow up to three weeks.

Pot on through 9cm and 2 litre pots into a 10 litre final pot or a greenhouse border, at 45 to 50cm spacing. Plants reach around 75cm and the long fruit are held on brittle branches, so stake early.

Pinch out the tip at 20cm, feed with high potash tomato feed from first fruit set, and keep the plant under cover from May right through to the end of October. Moving it outside in September to make room for something else is the classic way to lose the crop.

Pick as each fruit turns fully red and slightly wrinkled, cutting the stalk with scissors. Leaving fully ripe fruit on the plant slows down the ripening of the rest.

This is a strong candidate for overwintering. A second year cayenne, cut back in autumn and restarted in March, flowers well over a month earlier and gives the ripening time this variety needs.