Purple beauties

Purple chillies.. I have heard about them. I have coveted them. Yet I never dreamt that we would grow them at our home. When I thought it was very rare to get the purple chilli seeds (referred as bolivian rainbow chilli) and that I have to really search for them in the online forums in order to secure some seeds, one of the Sunday market garden vendor was selling a sapling of this chilli. Talk about irony and coincidence. 

Store bought sapling

The sapling that was there in the market was very mature and already in the last stage of its life. But still we bought it (on my urgency purely).My idea was to save seeds some via this plant which had around ten or so fruits at that time and propagate them in our garden in the upcoming season. This plant arrived in our garden last year and gave me a good number of seeds (atleast a hundred). 

All fruits left for preserving seeds

For this season I sowed around 10 seeds and all of them germinated successfully. The plants were very healthy and gave us a decent number of chillies though we haven't used it in the kitchen so far. 

First fruit

The fruits are initially light green in color

Then they slowly turn to a dense purple color

And when ripe becomes blood red

Another bunch of fruits forming

Reserved for seed saving

In between purple and red, the fruits remain orange for a few days

I have heard that they are quite hot and we do not prefer that much heat in our cuisine. So for now they are serving only ornamental purposes in the garden but I have an inkling if the next season produce is more we might definitely see them getting used in the kitchen.