Ski trips + tiny chilli plants

This time of year is slightly problematic for chilli growers that ski; two things that aren't exactly compatible, unless you have a heated greenhouse and live near a ski resort.

Each spring, every inch of space under the grow lamps is jam packed with beautiful, flourishing green, albeit very small, chilli plants. Plants that I haven't left alone for more than a few hours (an advantage of working from home).

How then am I supposed to just up and leave for a week? Completely forget about them as I whizz about on the ski slopes, laze around in the spring sunshine with a yummy glass of wine and lounge around by the fire with a good book?

Actually it was quite easy once I got there. :D

But the week before I left was filled with anxiety. I was going to have to leave all of my teeny tiny hopefuls in their teeny tiny pots for a WHOLE WEEK! :O With no-one to water them, feed them, re-pot them, talk to them or squish any little nasties that might take a fancy to them. :'(

I have an extra grow lamp this year, so they weren't quite as squashed up, i.e. light wasn't a problem. But watering was worrying me.

I eventually decided on the re-pot and drown-them tactic. And it worked! :) Yay.

2 March

17 March

I have juggled them about, so it is difficult to compare plant by plant, and the first photo was taken 6 days before we left, i.e. there is a 15 day time difference, but still....

2 March

17 March

I was expecting half of them to be exceedingly unhappy. They were thirsty, sure. And I did have to spend an hour or so squishing little green nasties. Which, of course, I did before I'd even taken my coat off, ruthlessly leaving the hubby to unpack the car, etc. :D

But look at the size of them! :) The healthy chap in the middle is a Purple Serrano and the lanky one is an Aji Colorado. Two favourites in our kitchen.

Right. Off now to buy some quality compost for them...

Jalastar and Lombardo (capsicum annums) neck and neck

Of this year's chillies, the Jalastar and Lombardo capsicum annums are currently leading the race to fruition:

Now aged 3 weeks and 5 days (sown 28 January), these are my two strongest plants (Lombardo front left, Jalastar back left) at the moment:

All sown on the same date, not only is there a fair difference in development between the varieties, as you can see from the lanky Aji Colorado twig at the back right of the picture, but even within the same variety, as you can see from the two Lombardo plants at the front.

I think this is normal even when seeds and plants are grown in exactly the same conditions, but in my case it's probably more likely due to slight differences in light, heat, water and potting compost. Everything basically... Hmmmm need to be more consistent...

:)

Progress at last!

I'm finally seeing some progress among the chillies:

This is how you want your seeds to behave. All the Lombardo seeds germinated
really quickly and are growing fast. Time for a place of their own.

First sowing results: 0/3 2012 Trinidad Scorpion; 2/4 2013 Hot Lemon;
3/4 2013 Early Jalapeno; 4/4 2012 Jalastar

Hooray!! 6/6 2013 Aji Colorado - Our favourites! :D

After the failed first batch (albeit old seeds) of Trinidad Scorpion, when the new lot arrived in the post, I opted to germinate them (all varieties) in moist kitchen paper. It worked. However, some of them, like this one, germinated so fast they attached themselves to the paper, so I had to clip them out and plant them with a bit of paper. 

My lettuces are doing really well too, I'm going to try and liberate a few and grow them on indoors for cut and come again early salad leaves. Anyone tried that?

Great workout!

This time of year is not all about seeds and grow lights. For us, it is also lumberjack season. So far we've felled a huge oak, a mid-sized oak, a large aspen and a few small birches.

And it's one thing chopping them down, but then you have to process them...

Oak up

Oak down

I pulled all the branches away from the trunk as the hubby sawed them off
so he didn't stumble over them and to make it easier to get to the next bit.

All this has to be dragged away and piled up onto the bonfire.
Oak is HEAVY and awkward to carry!!

Slowly getting there.

The large aspen in the woods on the other side of the lawn.

Even with a log splitter, work is slow and heavy going.
And really tough on your back.

This lot is 100% oak. We have started storing the various wood varieties
separately due to different storage times. Oak takes 3-5 years!!

 

Seed chaos

I have spent the past 4-5 months hardly giving my vegetable garden/ cultivation/ greenhouse/ seeds, etc. a single thought. Why then was I - all of a sudden - unable to sleep last night. Seriously. I lay awake almost all night worrying about the state of my seed collection and how to fix it.

I even got up again and trawled the Internet for ideas on how to index & sort your seeds.

o.O

Luckily, I have a bad habit of collecting old plastic ice-cream containers and take-away packets, much to the annoyance of my husband, who often asks me what I intend to do with the 158 or so plastic containers (and lids) littering every cupboard and draw... Well, at last, I have an answer! :)

They are perfect seed containers!

I lined them with kitchen roll and, where needed, a piece of thin cardboard as a separator. And voila! Seed boxes!

Knowing full well that I am never going to keep them in alphabetical, or any other order for that matter, I have clumped them together into the following groups:

Tomatoes /separator/ Chillies
Herbs/ separator/ Lettuces & similar
Root veg & chard/ separator/ Beans & peas
Flowers

Before

After

Here's hoping I get some sleep tonight!

Itchy fingers

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only gardener with itchy fingers at the moment.

It's crazy. All it takes is the feel of the fresh new potting soil and a glimpse of a little green hook of life rising through it a week later.

All of a sudden, every inch of surface under the grow lights is covered.

My new mega seed trays :) Rocket (L) and Chartwell & Amerikanischer Brauner lettuces (R)

My new mega seed trays :) coriander (L) and Matador spinach (R)

Chillies, coriander, rocket, chives and two types of parsley

Germination

Ok, so I understand why the Aji Colorado seeds didn't germinate, being that I collected them myself before they'd matured. And I kind of expected last year's Trinidad Scorpion pot to be a bit on the bald side. Not one single seed from these two varieties germinated at all.

But this year's fresh new expensive Espelette & Hot Lemon Lord Nelson seeds? Pfff, what a disappointment. :(

I guess I should be a little more patient, as they've only been in the soil 12 days... But a few 2012 Jalastar seeds (unexpected) and all of the 2013 Lombardo have already popped up.


Lucky I have another 42 backup seeds about to germinate...

:D

Here we go again...

Having spent most of the winter sulking about the relatively rubbish vegetable summer we've just had, I pretty much decided to have a lazy 2013. And because the greenhouse seems to be infested with blight (or some other nasty stuff that eats plants) I decided to skip chillies and tomatoes this year.

However. Along comes January & February and all the magazines are going on and on about all the wonderful different varieties, and friends are boasting about their lovely little green babies flourishing under fluorescent lights in the basement...

Oh bugger it.

So I dug out last year's chilli seeds and sowed a few of them (Jalastar, Trinidad Scorpion
& Aji Colorado) until I'd bought some fresh seeds, just to combat the cravings. I then drove
as fast as I could to the local garden centre and bought Lombardo, Espelette & Hot Lemon seeds.

 As if that weren't enough, I got sucked into the world of online seed catalogues.

Package arrived from The Chili Pepper Company today

So. I've gone from "absolutely no chillies this year" to ... ummm...

Jalastar, Trinidad Scorpion, Aji Colorado, Lombardo, Espelette, Hot Lemon, Early Jalapeno, Padron, Purple Serrano and NuMex Bailey Piquin.

Oops.

:)

Welcome back by the way. Sorry I've been hibernating.

xx

Tomato time!

I was a little lazy, or restrictive if you will, with my tomatoes this year. I was hoping for a little less work, a little less must-harvest-all-the-veg anxiety, and a slightly more attractive greenhouse. But as is usually the case (I am learning) with gardening, things didn't really turn out that way...

This year's toms (2 of each) were:

Delicious Super Sweet cherry tomatoes. Will definitely grow again
next year, but next time 4 instead of 2 plants.

Somewhat unattractive Maskotka large cherry tomato plant. The tomatoes
are very tasty, particularly for their size, but I didn't know that they were
bush tomatoes - I could have grown them in front of other, taller plants.

I haven't actually tasted these yet, but I am very surprised that they turned out
identical to the fruits from which I saved the seeds - my favourite shop bought
plum tomatoes - I'm getting used to seeds being a bit of a lottery. Could have
had another plant or two, space-wise.

Work-wise I guess I saved a bit of work in the spring, sowing, repotting, mollycoddling, moving plants in and out, etc. But after that, I have still had to water and fertilize the entire greenhouse so it wouldn't really have made that much difference. Perhaps pinching out the side shoots etc, but how long does that take? So. Verdict? Six plants is too few. Perhaps 8-10 is about right... I guess I'll find out next year.

Harvest-wise, I am actually harvesting almost all the tomatoes before they split, rot, drop this year. If I do have more plants next year, it will be to store them. Here are some foodie photos of a few tomato harvests:

Super Sweet - and they really are!

Maskotka - whopper cherries.

Fabulously juicy, red red fruits. You can see the difference in size
between the Maskotka - bottom right hand corner, and the Super
Sweet - just above it to the left.

So that just leaves the pretty.

I was really hoping for a pretty, neat and tidy greenhouse this year, with lots of flowers and no dirty tools, pots, fertilizers.

I imagined myself sitting there with friends, sipping on a glass of chilled champagne, admiring the tidy greenhouse, the pretty flowers, the flourishing, healthy plants...

Haaaaaa ha ha ha haaaaaa...

Well I guess I did get a lot of flowers (I sowed marigolds around the edge of the border as I was told they were good bug-preventers), and they GREW like crazy. But I wouldn't say it was pretty this year.

My tool shed is just that bit too far from the greenhouse, and I'm just a bit too lazy.

Perhaps I should just accept the fact that (without a lot of effort and discipline) a working greenhouse can't look like they do in the magazines...?

Happy harvesting!
:)

I don't know how all you bloggers do it...

...how do you keep blogging when you get the garden blues?

Personally I haven't even wanted to read all my favourite blogs over the summer, as they just remind me how much I have to do, how many things went wrong with the flowerbeds/kitchen garden this year, what didn't grow, what I didn't harvest and left to rot on the plant/to get eaten by birds/slugs/etc, how to get rid of all the pests/diseases, etc, etc.

Obviously there has been a lot of lovely, but the hurdles just get so overwhelming in a garden of this size.

Anyway, I've managed to fight the absence anxiety and found a few photos from my mother's visit a few weeks ago (she lives in Gibraltar and came to stay for a week). Having a completely new opinion and taste with me around the garden centres was brilliant, you do tend to get stuck in a style rut. For example, I can't leave a garden centre without buying a herb or two, despite the fact I have more than I can possible consume/take care of :D And my mum just went round picking out shrubs with dark foliage - which I would NEVER have done. Any don't they look fabulous?! (well they will next year)

Coral Flower 'Palace Purple' (Heuchera micrantha)

Bugbane 'Brunette' (Cimicifuga racemosa)

Ninebark 'Diablo' (Physocarpus opulifolius) - between the mallow and the tall aster.

We've only had a garden for four years and my mum has never seen it before (apart from photos), and she has really green fingers, so it was a real pleasure to talk plants and gardening for the first time ever.

Here are some lovely random photos I took while she was here:

Union Jack up of course...

Went for a walk in Särö Västerskog and had lunch at Blomstermåla.
I absolutely love Scots pines and there are plenty around Särö.

Day out at Tjolöholm Slott.

Once you get over the fact that you will never EVER get your garden to look
like this one, some of the plantings were very inspiring.

Effective block colours...

Amazing dahlia walk, the yellow ones were the size of two hands..

And the visit wouldn't be complete without a crayfish party!! :D

I will try and blog more often now I'm on top of things again, but if you have any tips on how you manage to keep blogging despite the weather, slugs, bugs, fungi, non-germinators, etc, etc. they would be much appreciated.

Thanks for coming back to my blog!
:)