Chilli grower Joy Michaud has won her own ‘chilli challenge’ for the second year running.

The challenge was to see how many chillies can be grown from one plant.

Last year she proved the ‘super hot’ Dorset Naga, developed with husband Michael at their West Bexington Sea Spring Seeds business from a Bangladeshi chilli, was capable of producing 2,407 chillies from one plant after customers complained the plants were difficult to grow.

This year she threw down the gauntlet again with a competition to grow both the most Naga chillies and the most from any other type of chilli plant.

The deadline was Monday and so far the highest entries haven’t come close to Joy’s own effort, which was counted on Saturday.

She said: “After our success last year, when we picked 2,407 red chillies off one, very large, Dorset Naga plant, which we called Nigel, we wanted to see what other chilli plants could do.

“We sell seed of a variety called Rooster Spur, which produces masses of tiny chillies, so at the beginning of the year we set about growing a record breaking chilli plant.

“We brashly, very brashly as it turned out, boasted that we would produce a plant that had more than 5,000 red chillies on it.”

Joy might not have grown 5,000 but the final tally was an eye-watering 3,238.

Joy added: “I am convinced we can do 5,000 so we’ll do it again next year.

“We only counted the red ones, although it was absolutely laden with green ones. Rooster Spur is a small plant but it produces thousands of tiny chillies and they are very hot – not as hot as the Dorset Naga but they are very hot.

“I know this variety should do better than 3,200 but I just didn’t look after it as we were really busy this year.

“We had really bad aphids and I didn’t keep control of them and I am convinced that is what held it back, so next year we are going to have another go until we get to the 5,000.”

The winner for last year’s Naga plant got 401 chillies but this year one of the 39 people trying to beat Joy’s record has reached 2,256 and so far that’s the figure in the top spot.

No results are through yet for the 13 vying to grow any variety.