IF you grow sweet peppers in pots bring them outside. After the first flowers form, feed regularly with a tomato fertiliser and water frequently.

Pick the peppers when they are ripe but while the skin is smooth.

Avoid those with wrinkled skins.

Peppers are sensitive to frost, so if fruits are developing by September, take them under cover at night.

To grow peppers next year, seeds should be sown in March, two to a nine-centimetre pot, in a heated propagator, or on a warm windowsill at 20C. Once the seedlings appear, remove the weaker one and reduce the temperature to a mimumum of 14C.

Once they have filled their small pots, place them into two-litre pots of multipurpose compost and then, in June, pot them in five-litre pots.