All that said, it's been an interesting season so far. Pleasant surprises and bitter disappointments have occurred along the way; however at this late stage, it's perhaps more prudent to be thankful for what we are currently enjoying from the garden, and move on from the disappointments in the hope that next year will bring somewhat better results.
An unusually warm April benefited my chili plants and we are enjoying a range of different shapes, sizes, flavours, and intensity of heat from all of the different varieties. I'm including a few pictures below:
Habaneros
We have yet to use any of these, so I can't report on the flavour as yet. If they continue as they have been doing (and ripen to a nice orange!) I plan to make a homemade hot sauce - hot sauce is a favourite in our house! Habaneros peppers are much too hot to realistically use for much else, unless of course you were prepared to spend a lot of time chopping them up into minute pieces, and removing all of the seeds before adding to your dish. Hot sauce it is....unless anyone can convince me otherwise.
I appreciate it's a bit difficult to see the fruits among the foliage, and my photographic skills are fairly limited, but it serves a purpose anyway.
I also have a habaneros in my large plant house outside, and although it's set a few fruits, it appears to be struggling in comparison to the ones indoors. The big surprise with the Habaneros is the one I gave to my neighbours, Lisa and Steve; it's doing really well outside on their patio! I was quite jealous.
Cayennes
The cayennes were a pain at first,and now they are positively thriving. Last year I tried to grow cayennes, but I didn't get a single fruit, and lost many of the plants when they were quite young. My expectations for this year were therefore quite low, but I'm really glad I tried. I have three plants on my office window, two of which I intend to overwinter this year, in the hope that they will do even better next year. Here are some I picked today:
The cayennes we've used so far have been delicious; not too intense, but lots of flavoursome heat.
Jalapenos
A similar story to the cayennes: lost a lot of last year's plants when they were young, and had no fruits. This year, the results are quite different:
And the Jalapeno plant below is one that's just started coming to life:
I don't know what to use the Jalapenos for, other than as a topping on a pizza, so I'll have to look up some ideas on the net.
One of the varieties I've been excited about this year is the Ring of Fire - as the name suggests, it's very fiery! So far, I'm doing quite well with one plant, another is coming into its own slowly; but two of my plants came under attack from White Fly. By the time the infestation was noticeable it was too late to spray the plants because the flowers were open. I toyed with the idea of putting them outside to see if natural predators would sort the problem out; however, they can't tolerate the outside at all, and it was too risky to put them near anything else. Having pulled half my hair out because of infestations of Aphids and Spider Mites over the last couple of months (and finally enjoying the fact that I'd cleared everything up by spraying!) I wasn't prepared to take a risk with White Fly. I've recently learned that White Fly can withstand spraying...I hope that particular little nasty isn't going to be problematic to any future plants of this variety.
Here are some pictures of the RofF:
That's enough of the indoor chili plants for today! I'll be back with pictures and details of the Fresnos, Cherry Chillies, Super Hots, Paper Lanterns, Joes's Longs, and Aji Limons. But before I finish off for today I'll leave you with a picture of my strawberry planter (now serving as a strawberry/marigold/spinach/herb planter!). I'm so glad I could make use of it; I think it looks rather pretty:
I also have plenty of pictures to take outside, including tomatoes, sweet peppers, aubergines, courgettes and marrows....
