February already!

The arrival of February signals the beginning of chilli seed sowing!  Chillies can either surprise or disappoint you, and rarely are they what I would consider to be 'reliable', unless of course you have the room to house them in a lightbox, or if you have an unused warm room in the house where you can give them 16 hours of artificial light per day, until they can be potted on, hardened off and left to do their own thing. But don't let any of that worry you; if I can produce chilli plants of the quality I did last year (relying purely on natural light and heat, and being realistic in my expectations about the longevity of the season) then anyone can!  A challenge is a challenge, and in order to learn we must try and try again. 

You'd be amazed at the various set-ups people use in order to get them going a month or so earlier than 'normal'.  Here's a picture of one such set-up, taken from The Chilli King's website:

And a picture of his chilli growing lightbox!

You can't see very much in this picture, but the overall idea (or hope) is that by starting them off early and providing them with as much light and warmth as possible, they will have a longer and more bountiful season. But really, as you'll see from the picture below, you'd think it was cannibis some of them were growing! Personally, I don't fancy becoming so obsessive about chilli growing; I enjoy it, but I simply don't have enough time to give to one thing.  Tomatoes, beans, courgettes, brussels sprouts, garlic, onions, and a myriad of fruits, all need my attention too.  Ergo, what will be will be with the chillies!  When Martin reads this he'll say : "I'll remind you of that in a couple of months, when you're becoming obsessive again!"  He did have to remind me about becoming obsessive only last evening - I'd almost talked him into building a lightbox!!  Don't worry, it's not happening......not this year anyway. 

For amateurs like myself : Don't be put off by any of this lightbox and flourescent tubing business; it's not hard work to create your own happy chilli environment without the use of lightboxes, greenhouses and south-facing conservatories.  If this year is your first attempt, try to buy a young plant and leave the germinating until next year; that way you'll get a feel for how to look after them, and you can make notes (as I did) about how they respond to changes in temperature and environment, and what their watering and feeding requirements are etc.  If you're determined to try raising your own plants, choose an easy variety such as cayenne, razzmatazz, patio sizzlers (excellent for coping with coolish summers) or super hots (very heavy cropper).  All of these varieties are perfect for beginners as they have a good germination success rate, and I guarantee you'll be hooked when you see those beautiful jewels in amongst the striking foliage!

My chillies of last year are proof that (although they had a much shorter season) your plants can still yield a great many fruits by germinating them 4-6 weeks later than the die-hard chilli growers are doing.  I wish I'd photographed my plants, as some of them were excellent, but I had a few duds and non-starters too.  After giving half my plants away(!) I had 6 super hots - all yielding a vast amount of fruits.  All of my super hots were grown outside : 3 on the patio, 2 in the plant house, and 1 in a pot dug half way into the ground.  The plants on the patio were by far the the most attractive, with masses of beautiful foliage, and growing to a height of almost 2 feet - they bushed out rather a lot too.  Over half of the fruits ripened to a full and glorious red, but they were smaller than the fruits on the other plants.  The plants in the plant house also ripened (albeit earlier (early August)) with much hotter and more flavoursome fruits.  But the plant dug half way into the ground did very, very well indeed; this plant was against a south facing fence and so it had enjoyed reflected (and stored up) heat from the fence well into the evening. This plant gave us the hottest and finest chillies we've had this year.  I brought it indoors and put it on the kitchen windowsill in September, where it continued to flourish well into October.....What a shame I didn't know about overwintering (more on this later) - this plant would have been excellent to nurse back to life this Spring.

My razzmatazz peppers did very well too and, although they were much milder in heat, they were anything but bland in terms of flavour.  I had eight plants : 4 indoors on a window-sill, and 4 on the patio - I didn't have any room left in the plant house to house any of these! Both positons did very well, but the ones on the window-sill produced larger fruits (and earlier) and they ripened much quicker.  In fact the ones outside didn't have much success in terms of ripening, but went the distance once I'd picked them and let them ripen on the kitchen window-sill.  Prior to ripening, the razzmatazz peppers are a host of colours : oranges, yellows, creams, purples, greens, and even pinks!  The foliage was dark green and contrasted beautifully with the bright and uplifting colours of the peppers.  I'd like to do a few of these again this year. 

And finally, the paper lanterns...I can't say very much about these because (as I now know) I did everything wrong (boo-hooFothergill, they can be grown successfully on a "sunny patio". 

My first chilli plant was one I picked up at Wilkinsons in the early summer of 2009; it was a half dead little seedling all on its own, and they were selling it off at 75p.  I took it home and nursed it a bit and before long it had bloomed into a beautifully healthy plant bearing numerous fruits.  We were eating chillies for months, and the plant still looked healthy in October.  Now, if only I had known as much about chillies back then as I do now, I would have undertaken the process of 'overwintering', a method of pruning back your chilli plant and keeping it in a warm room with plenty of light over the winter.  I was amazed to learn about this recently and I hope to try my hand at saving a few of my own plants this year, depending on my success, of course.  I think that if you've had a healthy and vibrant plant (as I did that year) then it's a shame to banish it to the compost heap when you could see it make a comeback the following year.  Incidentally, the variety of chilli plant was Apache (an F1).  The fruits were amazing: colourful, fleshy and juicy; but the flavour was ok - just ok.  Martin and I like full, flavoursome hot chillies, and for this reason I stepped up my game last year.

And back to this year...I'm already biting my nails in angst at the thought of getting past the germination stage; I think that's the most difficult bit really.  One of these days I will invest in a heated propagator!  But for now, I'm trying to keep my expectations at a realistic level, hoping beyond all hope that I'll have 50% success - at least.  My chosen varieties for this year are:

Joe's Long
Ring of Fire
Aji Limon (these are so pretty I've included a picture; they also have a citrusy flavour!)

Cayenne
Habanero
Paper Lantern
Razzmatazz

I couldn't find any super hot seeds - everywhere seems to be sold out.  If anybody sees any on their travels...I'd be awfully grateful. 

Wish me luck.....