Hi from Yorkshire

Just joined as this seems to be a good place for tips and advice.  I'm pretty much a complete novice; I first grew chillies a few years ago as a one-off, and have grown a few more this year, kind of by accident - I went to my local garden centre for tomato plants and came out with chillies (as well as tomatoes.)  Nothing wildly exciting: habanero paper lantern, scotch bonnet, a bushy super-chilli type (unlabelled,) gusto purple, and I've also grown some cayennes from seed.   Still waiting for the paper lantern to ripen - not sure if they will now.  The scotch bonnets have only just started turning red.  They are all in pots on a south-facing windowsill in the house.
 
I've found myself getting obsessed with them; I think it's the close relationship established with going in and tickling the individual flowers each day for pollination...  I've ordered (from a commercial supplier) a few different seed varieties for next year.  Hoping to overwinter a plant or two; fingers crossed!
 
So far, as well as using them in cooking (I can't cope with them raw - as yet, anyway) I've made chilli jam and am currently experimenting with varieties of chilli vodka (chilli, ginger and lime is my favourite so far).  Also planning chilli oil but a bit hesitant because of the risk of botulism.
 
Has anyone noticed that chillies seem to be able to go into suspended animation between pollination and fruit development?  On two of my plants (gusto purple and the bushy prolific one) they had a flush of flowers, which I pollinated, but they didn't develop fruit.  After I harvested other fruit on the plant, there were no more flowers, but the ones that had been pollinated (and the petals shrivelled) weeks previously, suddenly started growing into chillies.  I thought that was weird, but perhaps it's well known.  Is it just on capsicum annuum?
 
Thanks for the welcome, everyone!  I'm having to double check where you're all from, but I think I've worked it out.  Hampshire = the original Hampshire, not New Hampshire, but Jersey = New Jersey not the Channel Island!  Denmark's interesting... do you have a similar climate to us in England, I wonder?
 
kentishman said:
Greetings from South Carolina. Glad to have you with us.
Are you originally from Kent or is it just a name?
 
dragonsfire said:
Welcome to the Forum !!
Good Luck :)
I'll probably need it!
 
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