[Under The Hill]

I suddenly realised that I had no chilli seeds so I used some from the plant I grew last year that I had hung up in my larder at the end of last year.   Do you think they will germinate?    I read somewhere that you should dry them out so they were no longer bent.  I did notice that some were a bit bent!  The chillies were dry, very dry and funnily enough  the seeds from the green chilli (which had not turned red) were straight whereas the ones from the red were a bit bent.      They are planted now but just wondering if any of you know much about collecting seeds from chillies and whether what I have done may be successful or is a definite no hoper.

[Robster]

I bought a packet of mixed chilli seeds year while before last while in America.  I grew them in the green house had a fantastic crop of all sorts of chillies.  I've kept some seed from a mixture and sowed them in early Jan.  Germination was good.  I'm hoping for some kind of super hybrid many years down the line.

I think you'll be fine

[Kristen]

Do you think they will germinate?

Most probably.   When I want to test germination viability I put a few seeds on some damp kitchen paper (in a Tupperware / sealed / cling-filmed container, so they don't dry out).  You can plant any that do chit / germinate (tear the paper if the roots go through, and plant with-paper, it will rot down soon enough.

That said if the original Chilli was an F1 hybrid then the plants you get, i.e. "F2", may not be true to the parent plants. If that's the case its up to you - they might all be rubbish, or you might find that actually the F1 was relatively stable and some/all your plants are indistinguishable from the original - in which case self-save seed in future and save some money!

But ... for F2 crop you do run the risk that the crop is rubbish, so if the parent crop was F1 I would recommend that you buy & sow some other, known variety, Chillies just in case your self-saved seed crop doesn't deliver a suitable harvest.

[Aidy]

Agree with Kristen, you will find that there is a lot of F1 sweet peppers out there and fewer F1 chilli (hot) peppers, I have used cayenne and Jalapeno seeds before no problem.