What to do with the Chillies?

They're almost ripe!

I've spent the past 12 months or so growing my chilli plants. This has involved learning:

• how to grow chillies from seed;
• propagating them from seedlings to plants;
• learning the best time to trim them to promote the growth of branches from the main stem; and
• learning what fertilisers, watering regimes and soil types to use to promote the best growth.

It's been a real learning experience. And there have been many mistakes made along the way. Including one silly mistake that lost me half my plants in one hit... that mistake hurt a lot.

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But, I now find myself with roughly 30 plants and with most of these plants producing fruit as I write this article.

And this brings me to my current problem. What do I do with all these chillies? My main goal was to produce a product for sale. But all my focus to date has been on how to grow a healthy and productive chilli plant.

Well, this main goal has been achieved. So now it becomes time to decide on how to make money from all these chillies:

• What product can I make?
• Do I simply sell the plants that I grow?
• Do I sell the seeds that I can extract from my various species of chillies?
• Do I create a recipe for a chilli product and sell the product along with the recipe?

Or maybe I do a combination of these things?

A big problem that I have right now is finding the time to not only decide what to do with all my produce, but also create what ever it is that I am going to sell. So my available time has become a real deciding factor as to what it is that I end up selling.

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As it currently stands, I'm at a bit of a loss.

There are so many products to choose from if I have the time and energy to make something:

• chilli sauces
• chilli paste
• dried chillies, chilli powders and / or chilli salts
• chilli oils
• pickled chillies
• and many others

So perhaps I need to focus on what products are time effective and with decent profit margins. For example, chilli seeds are an easy product to create, and have a low cost to produce. But at the same time, they are difficult to sell, and only sell for low values. So while the cost of production is low, so are the profits. And therefore, they may not be a particularly viable product.

While chilli powder, on the other hand, can be sold for a reasonable margin. And the chilli seeds can be saved from all the chillies used to produce the powder. So here we have a product that may be viable, and an additional product that may be sold in addition to the primary product, regardless of the low margin made. But then we need to consider the time factor again. And selling multiple products is likely to be non-viable at this stage.

So again, what is the best option here? In all honestly, I do not have the answer. This will no doubt be a work of trial and error. And it will probably drive my wife insane. There will be many hours spent testing different products, trying out a variety of recipes, and attempting to sell a variety of products via a wide range of platforms and methods.

The win will be establishing a viable product that is:

• cost effective to produce;
• low effort to produce; and
• with decent profit margins to provide the motivation to continue producing said product.

And most of all, I cannot hate producing what ever product it is that I end up creating. My main goal here is to create a secondary income stream that I enjoy creating. And the enjoyment aspect of this is vital. After all, this is a product that I intend to create in my free time away from work. And I work ridiculous hours, so it is utterly vital to enjoy what ever it is that I do with my free time.

What do you think? Are there any chilli related products that you can think of that fit my vaguely described criteria? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

@debtfreein2