Chilli Harvest Part 1

I haven’t been very successful in my green house for a couple of years but this year has been good. Below is a photo of part one of my chilli harvest from my four super duper chilli plants.

I’m so pleased and there’s more to come! 🙂

News From My Greenhouse

I just realised that I haven’t reported on how things are doing in my green house. Well they are doing grand!

I have two lovely aubergine plants with fruit and more flowers,

four chilli plants doing amazing, full of fruit,

and twelve tomato plants, several different varieties, performing quite well.

I am so enjoying growing. All my plants are being fed with organic seaweed plant food. 🙂

Tomatos and Chillies

Over the last month, as you know, I’ve been starting to sow my seeds.
I went down to water them today and not only did I have cayenne chillies and aubergines sprouting which I knew about

….I have a Roma tomato

and a birds eye chilli as well!

I just love it when everything starts growing 🙂

Tomatos

I have just written a postcard to a lady who has sowed up to 150 varieties of tomatoes in one go. Her enthusiasm was contagious so straight away after writing the card I was out in the garden sowing mine. I definitely didn’t worry how many I sowed! 🙂

I sowed 12 different varieties, a couple saved on kitchen tissue so I won’t know the variety of those until they have fruited. Some of these are the ones I got free from a magazine.

I find, with me, extravagance pays. Last year I didn’t sow many and didn’t do very well. I hope this year is going to be different!

I sowed them in organic vegetable compost that I bought. When I pot them on I will use my own homemade compost. I don’t tend to sow into my own compost because of the weed seeds in it.

Tomatoes

Despite the neglect, my tomatoes a doing surprisingly well 🙂 They are showing signs of irregular watering but still taste delicious!  
The same goes for my peppers and chillies.

I’m planning to roast and preserve the peppers in olive oil

and dry and freeze the chillies 🙂

Garden Success

How do you see success in your garden? Are you like me expecting that you can achieve what you might  consider great things as well as working and looking after you family and your house?! I continually have to put this success into perspective. There is only so much time you can put into growing things unless you are putting all of your time into being self sufficient (so my husband keeps telling me)!

I’ve just been out to explore the garden that gets attended way less than I’d like, to pick some things for lunch and this is some of what I saw.

I have pumpkins,

beetroot,

chillies,

peppers

and tomatoes

and my husband says I should call this success! 🙂

Peppers

Here’s a long awaited update from the green house.

These are red sweet peppers from bought seed.  I don’t want to speak too soon but I think they are doing alright.

These are chilli peppers I got free from a magazine. ‘Demon Red’ There were only five seeds and I have three healthy plants from them. By the sound of their name, they are gonna be hot!

These are ‘Scotch Bonnet’ chillies, from my own saved seed. They are looking good. If you look carefully you can see little buds forming on the top of the plants 🙂

These are common red chillies, medium heat, from my own saved seed. I dried some of these before and they keep well.

Can’t wait until they start turning red. I must look after them carefully now so as not to loose the fruit!:-)

Chilli’s and squashes

I am really pleased to report that my 5op chilli plants that I bought in the summer are now looking like this.

As I hadn’t time to prepare the beds when the plants were ready my squashes and courgettes went into a wheel barrow and some large pots. They are looking like this.

These are at an advantage being by the back door, watering is easy. I’m looking forward to the fruit now that I have got all those flowers 🙂 By the way, these are all growing in my home made compost!

Garden Update

Well, here in Norfolk in the UK, the weather has been very gloomy and dull and the plants and vegetables are reluctant to grow.

I’ll show you the bright bits first. The chive flowers always are a treat.

The Aquilegia are one of my favourites as they flower for quite a long time.

The greenhouse is very slow this year, any taste of warmth though and the plants put on a spurt of growth.

I went out this morning for watering duty and something has been eating my chilli plants

and my courgettes

Life for plants is very hard and frustrating for humans.