Started the Chillies and some Toms.

Planted this years chillies and sweet peppers today (New Years Day) as I have done for the last few years.

I have still bags and bags of frozen chillies in the freezer, jars and jars of pickled, dried and powdered chili, so this year I have sown less hot peppers and more sweet peppers.

In fact the Capsicum list this year is a total of three, Jalapeño, Sweet Yummy (Snack Bite), and Ancho Poblano. So really no really hot peppers at all this year. I do have a over wintering Ghost Pepper.

The Sweet Yummy peppers are all grown from seed save from last years crop,  so free  plants this year, hopefully they are true to form as they where grown next to Orange habaneros.

Sown the seeds this year in a tray with just compost instead of the coir pellets I normally use. Just to see if works it works out better.

I have also started of some Tomatoes, Craigella a little early maybe, but the packet did say from January onwards.

Nice harvest from the Allotment

Popped down the Allotment yesterday to have a check around, by heck courgettes grow quick don't they. Didn't have much time to weed and tidy up so it was just a case of harvest a quick water in the polytunnel and green house  then home.

I was very pleased to see the Dwarf french beans are doing well after the Rabbit attack earlier in the year. So on hands and knees picked lots of lovely dark purple, almost black beans. These beans are Purple King and when you cook them they turn green. They are a very nice French bean to eat as well, and so far a very good cropper.

The  Climbing French beans are also making a come back, I'm not sure which type of bean I harvested as Jane planted 2 different types of climbing bean. Cobra and Hunter, both from vegetableseeds.net.

The Broad beans continue to do well, we have had loads of these and I really like them fresh from the pods for dinner.

Took a couple of the Sweet Peppers (Green) from the greenhouse to promote new flowers and fruit on the plants as the two plants these came from only had a single pepper on each and no flowers. The plants energy should now go into producing new fruit and hopefully more fruit on each plant.

I can hardly get into the polytunnel for cucumber plants, but managed to get a nice ripe Tomatoberry and another cucumber for the fridge.

Got a lovely nice big Pattypan squash as well, we had a small one last week which we cooked up with some courgettes and it was very nice. so I'm looking forward to chomping on this one.

Them there courgettes are heavy croppers, these are Green bush, and I picked 11 today alone, and we have already had 6 or 7 last week all from 5 plants, and still more to come. Good job we quite like them.

The only other thing I really did down the 'lottie was save some pea seed for next year and dead head and distribute some big pink poppy seeds and calendula seed to next years flower bed.

Sunny Day, it's Strimmer Time!!

Spent best part of the day playing with my new "POWER TOOL" a petrol strimmer.



It did a great job for tidying up all the bloody grass that keeps growing at this time of year. With 2 full plots to keep tidy it made it so much quicker and easier on the hands to power through both plots.

Did a load of weeding around plot 119, trying to catch up a bit after a week away.

The Hops are right at the top of the flagpoles now, something has been eating at the Goldings hops but it's still okay and all the hops are now sending out side shoots.



Tied up the Tomatoberry plants, and thinned out the Gardeners Delight in the polytunnel.

The Chillies are coming back from the cold nights, some are in flower and others even have a few fruits on them. All a good sign for later on in the year.

They all got a good drink with added Tomato feed to perk them back up a bit more.

Seedlings : Tigerella, Gardeners Delight, Cucumber Crystal Lemon, Cucumber Swing, Melon Outdoor Wonder

More lovely seedlings are poking their heads up.



So sitting the the brewshed under lights are:

Tigerella (Tomato)

Gardeners Delight (Tomato)

Cucumber Crystal Lemon

Cucumber Swing F1

Melon Outdoor Wonder

Looking forward to getting these in the polytunnel, I already have planted the Black Beauty Aubergines (4) and the Tomatoberry's (4) directly into the ground through sheeting instead of using growbags.

I am hoping that the tomatoes will do better than last year, now that I know what to do with them. We kinda just let them do their own thing last year as we didn't really understand about how to keep a cordon. I found a helpful website that explained it all in words & pictures that I could understand on how to prune them properly. It's all well and good books telling you to pinch out side shoots, suckers etc, but if you don't know what they look like it's not a lot of help.

Roll on Spring!!!

When is the warmer weather going to appear?? I have seedlings that want to be out in the sunshine growing lots of lovely goodness but the nights are still sub-zero around here (Somerset).

I have Green Mint, Parsley Grune Perle and Parsley Extra Curled, Sweet Basil, Coriander all waiting in the light box to be put in the herb beds. The Ogen Melon's are still indoors in 10cm pots,  Some Garden Perle Tomato’s on the windowsills ready for the hanging baskets.

Not to mention the 21 hot and sweet pepper plants that are on every windowsill in the house all waiting to go to their new home in the unheated allotment greenhouse.

And that is just my plants, Jane has got a mini greenhouse full of things starting to germinate, come on Spring warm up a bit.

Chillies are getting big.

The chillies are getting quite big now, so some have been evicted from the light box and moved to the bedroom windowsill. The six biggest plants have now got a new home in the bedroom, Gusto, Jalapeno, Scotch Bonnet, and Long Slim hot peppers and Gypsy F1, Peperone for the sweet peppers. Oh and the Tomato Garten Perle for the hanging baskets have taken up position next to them.



Been doing a bit of reading about pinching out the tops of the chilli plants to increase yield, and as the Long Slim has got to this point I thought I would give a go, last year I didn't do this and most of my chillies where long and lanky. I'll see how the Long Slim chillie plant responds to this before doing the same to the others.



Pinched off the top half of the Long Slim, poor old fella. Even had a few flowers forming on the stems.



Staked the stem to give support for the new growth, which better happen or I won't be very happy stunting the growth of this cayenne pepper, as I gave my other Cayenne plant away as a house warming gift.

All the other peppers are still in the light box. With a lot more room they should come along nicely. They have all been culled to one plant per pot now as well.

New home for the Chillies

Picked up one of those 4 tier mini greenhouses from town this week for a home for the Cape Gooseberries and Chillies. All set up in the back garden to get plenty of sunshine. With the weather as mild as it is at the moment I have already put my Chilli, Cape's and Tumbling Tom seedlings in there, and they seem to be all doing well. Just need to keep a very close eye on the weather in case we get another cold snap.

The plan is, as the plants grow, to remove the shelves one by one till the "hothouse" is full to bursting with lovely chilliness. The chillies had been planned to grow inside on windowsills but this way they have their own little home.

Tumbling Tom's

Last year I had 4 Tomato Tumbling Tom's that we bought as plants from the garden centre, growing out of the top of an old strawberry planter and got a quite decent crop keeping in mind I just left them to do their own thing.

Well last year following a Tomato seed saving guide that I found on the Internet I saved the seeds from my Tumbling Tom's and to my surprise they all germinated.



The plan this year is to plant them into a hanging basket that we have and look after them this time with a proper tomato feed and hope for a bumper crop.