Over the 17^th and 18^th of September, chilli growers and spicy food fanatics from far and wide descended upon Brighton’s Victoria Gardens for the 2011 Fiery Foods Chilli Festival. Although wind and rain bombarded visitors at times, it didn’t ruin the jovial atmosphere or stop GroWell from making a very successful first appearance at the event.

The amount of interest in how hydroponics can be of benefit to the chilli grower was truly staggering! Most people had not seen or heard of hydroponics before, which came as a big surprise to us! We were only able to take a very small amount of our range to showcase and focussed primarily on propagation equipment and the proposed new GroWell Chilli Growers Kit. When visitors saw the size of our ten-week old plant growing from a Wilma System housed inside a BudBox Tent, looks of astonishment quickly turned into excitement as they imagined the potential for huge never-achieved-before yields.

Elsewhere at the festival there were sauces, cookery demonstrations, jewellery and of course the actual plants and chillies themselves all on display. Some growers also gave talks on chillies, and as part of the National Chilli Awards, sauce creators pitted their products against each other in an attempt to win one of several titles.

The highlight for most people though had to be the chilli-eating contest. A dozen contestants worked their way through ten progressively hotter chillies until reaching the mouth melting Naga Jolokia – former world’s hottest chilli. Strong stomachs were required not only by the contestants, but also the audience as the competitors struggled to contain the fiery feast.

Since this weekend represented GroWell’s first appearance at a chilli festival, the chilli growing community naturally had many questions to ask us. From our conversations it quickly became clear that chilli growers could greatly benefit from hydroponic products – whether growing on a windowsill, or with a full indoor/outdoor hobby set up, all the way through to commercial growers.

Also in the next couple of weeks we will be posting an interview with Chillipepper Pete, event organiser and previous world record holder for producing the world’s hottest chilli. For those interested in Chillies, it should provide some insightful comments on the recent controversies regarding the world record. One thing that is clear is that his enthusiasm is contagious!

After our initial excursion into the chilli community, the warm welcome we received and the genuine interest we attracted it is safe to say that we will continue our association with the chilli growers. We would like to welcome the chilli growing community into our world, as warmly as we were welcomed into theirs, so stay tuned for more chilli related articles and grow diaries, aiming to help chilli growers of all abilities achieve the results that they desire.