Chilli people is our interview series with home growers, hot sauce makers, seed sellers and small chilli farms. This time I am answering the questions myself.
Who are you and where do you grow?
I am Simon, the chilli grower behind MyChilliGarden. I grow in Slovenia, in a Central European garden: beds in the garden, pots, and a south-facing balcony. The season here is on the short side. Nights can still be frosty into April, I move plants outside gradually around late May, and by October the first real cold is already on the way, so late harvests and overwintering matter a lot.
I have been sharing what works, and what does not, on MyChilliGarden since 2019. Growing and overwintering, late-season harvests, drying, flakes and powders, and the varieties that earned a place in the garden. You can follow the current patch on my garden page.
Away from the garden I work as COO and Principal Architect at NeuraRod, where we build custom AI agents for real business processes, and as CTO at Šolski center Krško-Sevnica.
How did you get started with chillies?
It all began back in 2006, when some friends and I ordered a bottle of Dave’s Gourmet Insanity Sauce from America. That was the spark. We used it one toothpick at a time; any more than that was too much. From around 2013 I started growing chillies myself, and in 2019 I turned the garden into a diary and started MyChilliGarden.
The first season I wrote about on the site was 2019. In February I was already preparing for that year. By August and September I was picking the harvests I still have photos of: Jalapeños first, then a mixed haul with Habaneros, Carolina Reapers, Diavolicchio Calabrese and Chocolate Scorpion. In October, as the frosts arrived, I moved plants indoors and started dehydrating habaneros. That same month I published the first Welcome post on MyChilliGarden, as a place for people to share chilli growing knowledge.
From the beginning the idea was simple. Once you have grown your own chillies, the taste and the feeling are different from anything you pick up at the supermarket. It is a privilege to walk into the garden and choose what goes into the next meal.
What do you grow or make?
The main lineup is fairly steady. In 2025 I sowed Habanero Orange, Habanero Chocolate, Carolina Reaper, Naga Morich, Jalapeño and Bishop’s Crown, starting the seed trays in February on heat mats. Some of the plants have names now. Dac is my Habanero Chocolate, Habero is the Orange, Plani is the Naga Morich, and Kudzu is the Bishop’s Crown. I grow them in the ground and in 10 to 15 litre pots on a south-facing balcony. Over the years Bolivian Rainbow, ghost peppers and Cherry Bomb types have also had a place in the garden.
Most of the harvest goes into the kitchen and into jars for winter. I dry the pods at a low temperature, around 50 to 60 °C, until they are brittle, keep some as flakes, and grind the rest into homemade chilli powder in labelled jars. Alongside the flakes and powders I also make my own chilli seasoning blend. I freeze fruit as well. Chocolate habaneros I use dried and frozen. I also bake chilli bread from a regular dough, with walnuts, peanuts, sunflower seeds, dried habaneros and chilli powder, as I first did for a birthday party in 2019.
That same December I made oven-baked ribs with a homemade barbecue sauce flavoured with habanero chilli powder, and served the chilli bread on the side, that time with bacon and onion, for Christmas dinner. I still cook ribs this way; in 2026 my son made a honey chilli version.
Your favourite varieties
It changes a little with the year. In 2024 my best performer was the Habanero Orange. In 2025 it was Habanero Chocolate, which I have grown in the ground and in pots in both years. For flavour, Habanero Chocolate is my favourite. I find the chocolate pods fruitier than my orange habaneros. The plants reach about half a metre in the ground, a little less in pots. In both seasons the first fully brown pods came in July, and I went on picking them through autumn. In 2024 I was still harvesting them in early November, next to orange habaneros and ghost peppers.
I also keep coming back to Bishop’s Crown, Naga Morich and Jalapeño, and some of those have now gone into a third season after overwintering. More plant-by-plant notes are in Growing Habanero Chocolate.
Your biggest mistake or lesson
I would not point to one single disaster, but a few lessons have stuck.
The clearest was in spring 2025, when some of my overwintered plants were infested with aphids and whiteflies. The first rule now is to check those plants carefully, and to keep anything infested well away from the seedlings. Overwintering still pays off. That same spring my Naga Morich, Habanero, Bishop’s Crown and Jalapeño woke up for their third season. By mid-March 2026 the overwintered plants were already ahead of the fresh seedlings, and the Jalapeños were flowering in pots.
Other lessons from the diaries: watch young plants for millipedes, look at the roots and move a plant on when they circle the pot, water evenly in pots to keep blossom end rot away, and a broken stem is not always the end if you stake it quickly. At the end of the season I still hang whole plants upside-down, with the roots wrapped, so the last green pods can ripen. I first used that method after a cold, slow 2020 season, and I still reach for it when frost is coming.
Tips for beginners
Start early enough for a Central European season. I sow in February, on heat mats, and I keep an eye on temperature and humidity. After weeks under lights, harden the plants off slowly: a first short day outside, then more, and only then a permanent place in the garden or on the balcony. On the balcony I water in the early morning in hot weather. In the beds I water at the base, and I give some shade in the hottest hours so the pods are less likely to scorch.
You do not have to start from seed every year. If you have space indoors, bring plants in when nights drop below 10 °C, check them for pests, and keep them in a room that stays at 10 to 12 °C or warmer. The full method is in How to Overwinter Chilli Plants. If you want the steps from seed, I wrote a guide to growing chilli from seed. The seasons themselves are in my Garden Diary 2024 and Garden Diary 2025.
Where can people find you?
Here on MyChilliGarden: my garden page, the Garden Diary, and the growing notes. I am on X as @mychilligarden and on YouTube as @MyChilliGarden, where I share nature sounds and garden videos. If you grow chillies too, you can share your own story or add a free listing to the Chilli Directory. The Contact page is the easiest way to say hello.