So I went to the Land Down Under...

This will probably be the last post for a couple of weeks, as university work once again begins to pile up.

I never thought it would end up being as much work as this, but heck, I guess sometimes it is possible to have too much school work while at the same time having to work in full time employment...

:-(

I can confirm the first pods of the season!

Hazzah!

They are from the Lemon Drop. I am well and truly chuffed. This means the season is ON!

Booyah!, as the people say.

It's Pimms' O'clock and all that jazz!

I moved the Fatalii's somewhere sunny, but I will have to move one of them again, as that room is being turned into a student study room, and the last thing I want is to be blamed for a person of university-level education's lack of common sense in trying to taste a chilli pepper...

...but if there's something I have learned in all my years in the magical realm of 'academia', it's that a university education and common sense can sometimes be akin to oil and water.

I planted the two Cashew Apple seeds (that would be two unopened cashew nuts to everyone else) yesterday. Each seed is larger and heavier than probably all the packs of orange habanero seeds I have combined...

Now it's just a waiting game.

As I had said in the previous post, Almapaprika and I recently traveled to the land Down Under.

I have to admit, it was a wonderful and spectacular place.

But then again, we did travel during the Oz autumn, and were not subjected to the 40C temperatures of summer.

And, of course, while I was there, I could not help myself when I went to one of our gracious hosts' homes and discovered they too loved chillies:

Ah, there is something about growing your chillies outdoors that is so rewarding!

They also had a lemon tree and some passion fruit vines!

It was heavenly, even though the Oz Magpies are large (twice as large as the British ones) and rather fearsome looking with their red eyes.

Oh, and here's a treat:

Couldn't really go to Oz without taking a photo of a 'Roo.

Well, with any luck the next post will include photos of the pods back in the UK.

:-)

And just like that!

Hmmmm,

Mr. Arboc must be psychic.

:-)

I heard chillies can give a man all sorts of super human abilities.

And many thanks, mazcalzone. The studies go well, though I am by no means out of the woods quite yet!

:-(

I've been extremely busy on the studies front, so much so that there are only a couple of plants growing.

But they are doing quite well. Many are now flowering, and while part of me is tempted to pinch the buds and let them grow some more, another part of me greedily mutters

'Chillies! yeah!'

Such is life.

I am crossing my fingers with excitement because one of the Aji Lemon Drops seems to be teeming with flowers and quite possibly pods!

Hazzah! A new one to savour! People say very good things about this pod, so I am looking forward to it.

The Gold Cayenne, and Ring of Fire are also in bloom, though no pods yet; a curious thing, since the annums have always fared better in colder weather (and this April/may has been a bit cooler than normal).

The Goats Weed looks absolutely fab. It's like The Capsicum Deities decided they wanted a plant to be coated with velour, and made it so! Cotton Candy wrapped chilli plants!

It is starting to show little buds, so no doubt I will soon be seeing new chillies (fingers crossed).

The Stromboli is also showing the start of its typical cluster of about 10-14 flowers, so that is also good news.

The Scorpion/GWH cross is doing well, but still no flowers...typical chinense...(grumble).

The two Fataliis are healthy and green, but haven't flowered or shown the slightest desire to do anything other than look 'ornamental'. I might move them to a sunnier/hotter spot to see if I can change that.

They vex me, those two.

As much as plants can vex a man.

Two years and zilch...

The Strawberry Guava is doing well, though a midget compared to the rest of the chillies. This is a plant that is supposed to grow to 6meters high, and right now it is well south of 6 inches. But it is growing very green and healthy with many leaves. I might take the Baby-bio with me to work Friday and see if we can give it a bit of nitrogen to help.

This one will be a slow grower, but I'll wait.

On a non-capsicum related note, I got a seed order I was waiting for quite excitingly today, and have sown quite a few new and quite diverse things.

How diverse?

Well...

5X Suriname Cherries (Eugenia uniflora)

5X Baby Kiwis (Actinidia arguta)

2X Bush Rose (Eucalyptis macrocarpa)

2X Black Mulberry (Morus nigra)

2X Gardenia (Gardenia jasminoides)

2X Myrtle (Myrtus comunis)

2X Giant Sequoia (Sequoiadendrum sempervirens)

Now, before you start asking 'What?!', there are simple and perfectly good explanations to all of these as well as the pack of Tea Tree and Cashew Apple I am desperately trying to sow in the next few days.

The Suriname Cherries remind me of the fence near one of my former workplaces, a day school which used to have them as part of the hedge rows. Why said day school chose to have a sour cherry bush as its hedgerow, I will never understand, but it always reminded me of that little area of a neighbourhood of my youth (my first job was age 16..a bit old, I know).

The Baby Kiwis and the Bush Rose Almapaprika and I saw whilst travelling recently 'down under', and in a way will hopefully serve as a reminder of that brief but fantastic time in a truly wonderful place (by the geographic distribution of the bush rose you can guess where we've been to :-P)

The Mulberry is because there is a great big mulberry tree near my place of work now, and though I've tried getting cuttings from it, nothing has worked.

That, and something about a monkey chasing a weasel (no doubt the weasel is a cheese thief...they all are).

The Gardenia because it is a smell of my youth, and I seem to recall it being prominent back home, and in some of the places I've lived in as well.

The Myrtle because it reminds me and almapaprika of a little holiday we had once...and because I want to eventually do the same liqueur they do in Corsica and Sardinia, Mirto!

The Giant Sequoia because, well, lets face it, who wouldn't. I mean it is just such a ginormous tree! It is the skyscraper of the vegetative world! If it does grow, then hundreds of years after I am gone, all things being positive, someone might walk up to it and say

'Blasted thing is ruining my perfectly good view of the natural (not man influenced over the course of several millennium oh no!, heaven forbid!) English Countryside! Who was the genius who planted this here?!'

And my work will be done.

:-)

The Tea tree because Almapaprika and I, along with another two close friends walked through the closest thing to a tea tree forest in Oz, and the smell was so fragrant and fresh.

...and we can lure quokkas!

The Cashew Apple, well, you're not really from Aji Chombo Land if you've not had a Cashew Apple tree growing in your back garden, and have had the cashew apple juice permanently stain your shirt, had cashew apple jam, and roasted cashew nuts in a fire to get the slightly burn, warm and oh-so-tasty roasted cashew nuts and pigged out!

And yes, this last plant is strictly tropical, cannot grow above a very specific altitude, and the slightest frost kills it.

Which makes it a challenge to grow.

:-)

One final thing and I shall leave you to digest this all:

I was really 'chuffed', as the Brits say, to see that five friends have asked me for chilli seeds this year, and two are already growing plants from those seeds!

I would like to think that in a little way, I am helping to spread the word about how totally awesome (TMNT moment, there) chillies are!

:-)

I will try to post photos of this years plants as soon as I can, provided I finish my assignments in time.

:-/

What a Planning Pickle

Wow...

Exams are over and a new semester of studies has begun.

I am going to be up to my armpits in work!

:-(

Politics of 'Big Society' and 'New Localism' asides (when I first heard of them I though they were games for my PS3, to be honest, and I thought 'gee! Is Big Society a cool cartoony game like Sim City?' but like Consuela from Family Guy, the answer as 'Eh nooooo...' It is all some cheeky and dangerously problematic new wave of 'let's re-define the role of planners' from the Planning Pickle, who is sadly also not a character of a PS3 game), this means I will be dedicating even less time to the chillies...

:-(

The seedlings are doing quite well, and what's even better, another of the Trinidad Scorpion x Giant White Habanero seedlings has also sprouted, along with the last of the Ring of Fire Cayennes!

:-)

Even one of the Strawberry Guavas looks to be germinating (and this time it's the real deal, not my foolishness).

I had to throw away two bags of dried chillies on Thursday because mould got into them!

:-(

Meaty chillies are difficult to dry. And even the slightest bit of moisture means mould. Away went about two dozen pods.

Even more disheartening, I used one of the Thai Dragons I grew last summer in a pot of Caribbean curry Almapaprika and I made on Thursday to spice it up...no heat! I ate a bit of the dried pod to make sure it wasn't a fluke.

No heat... good flavour, mind you. But there just wasn't any bite to it. It was a bit of a let down.

On a separate bit of news, those of you in the UK take note: selected Home Bargains are selling the 100ml Tabasco Chipotle sauce bottles for just 39p!

:-D

If you're wondering why I'm happy, it's because the 250ml bottles sell in world food stores and expensive delis for £5.00!

:-O

So if your nearby Home Bargains has them, I recommend you get the case they put out on the floor.

I can see clearly now, the label's on...

At last, some form of clarity!

I have to admit to my own personal stupidity in not properly labelling the coir pellets when I put the seeds in.

It has made for an interesting two weeks of guessing what has 'hatched'.

But finally, I can see it clearly, since what could have been either a Kumquat or a Stromboli Chilli has germinated:

Both did and I can confidently say they are chillies and not citrus.

I'm a bit sad, mind you. I was quite excited at the prospect of having little Kumquat plants.

But I guess them's the yams, as they say.

So, what I should have germinated at the moment is now definitely:

1 Goats Weed

1 Trinidad Scorpion x Giant White Habanero (F1 hybrid. Like a Liger or a Tiglon! So exciting!)

1 Gold Cayenne

2 Aji Lemon Drop

2 Stromboli

3 Ring of Fire Cayenne

10 out of 22 isn't that bad. I might be temped to do one or two more seeds of different varieties if there is space available, but one of the offices I use at work for growing chillies is being converted into a seminar room, so that will unfortunately limit space.

:-(

Two exams down, one exam and one report to go.

Las cosas en las que me meto yo... :-/

So Much Confusion...

In between attempting to get my head around the various many ways in which Urban Villages are useful (and the many more in which they are rubbish), I have come to the conclusion I got the order of seedlings wrong.

This now means that the seedlings I've seen 'hatch' (yes, bird term. But I like to think of my chillies as somehow 'bird like' Maybe, just maybe, they imprint on the first human they see, and adjust their spiciness levels to them) are in actuality the Goats Weed and a Lemon Drop. I don't mind this at all, since that would mean two new types to grow that I have yet to see go from seed to plant to pod!

:-)

A few more have also 'hatched', which, if my revised order is correct (again, fingers crossed) would be one of the Trinidad Scorpion x Giant White Habanero F1 (that's First Generation Hybrid) and a Gold Cayenne. There is another little seedling rearing it's little vegetable self out as we speak, and this one will definitely set the record straight. It will either be a Stromboli or it will be a Kumquat.

And there is a big difference between them, as one is a chilli and the other a member of the citrus family (oranges and tangerines and them giant lemons used in Judaic ceremonies!).

Anywho, will let y'all know what eventually happens.

Almapaprika is watching 'metabolically challenged' (fat) people being bullied by slim, muscular people, being made to run in treadmills, push tractor tyres around, run some more, and then forced to share the reason why they are fat on global television as each and everyone of them embarks on a 'journey' more difficult and perilous than Frodo and the Fellowship of the Ring embarked on when they tried to take the One Ring to Mordor: To Lose Weight.

To you lesser mortals, she is watching America's Biggest Loser.

I will probably join her, while holding a copy of a book by a chap named Allmendinger.

Riveting stuff on planning theory...

And we're off!

The first seed of the 2011 season has germinated!

And no surprise here, it's a Cayenne Ring of Fire. I have to admit that for the past three seasons these have been the most consistent performers for me. And they are good producers, so more to boot. They don't suffer as much with the mild temperatures of the UK, and thus tend to start setting fruit much earlier than the capsicum chinenses, which means that, though the plants grow a little smaller than the chinenses (though this is in part because I put them in smaller containers), I do manage to get a second harvest from them. The heat from them is also much more manageable for people than that of any of the Habaneros or 'super hots', which means I can more readily incorporate it into regular dishes.

I guess if you're short on space and want to grow a chilli which gives you 'edible heat', this would be my number one choice.

The first chilli seed germinated yesterday, but there was also another little one which germinated this morning: The Strawberry Guava.

Last year this particular plant was also quick off the blocks, but succumbed to damp because I kept it in the little greenhouse in the cupboard for too long.

I am hoping there will not be a repeat this year.

Once fully grown, this shrub/small tree can be frost hardy to an extent, which means it can be kept outdoors in the UK (except in severe weather), so it will hopefully make a very good large container plant.

Two out of 22 so far in less than a week. A promising start. Let's hope by next week I hit double digits.

Now, back to my meagre attempts at studying (revising to the Brits)

The 2011 Season Begins today!

At least for me, anyways.

Some folks have started already.

This will not be a heavy season for me (not like last year. I still have bags of chillies drying all around the flat, and jars of chilli related jams in the fridge.), because Almapaprika and I will more than likely be on the move once again, which means I can't have twenty-odd plant pots following me.

With that in mind, I've decided to make the 2011 season a bit more manageable.

I have just finished sowing:

-2x Goats Weed Chillies (c. annuum)

-2x Trinidad Scorpion x Giant White Habanero (c. chinense)

-2x Gold Cayenne (c. annuum)

-2x Lemon Drop (c. baccatum)

-2x Stromboli (c. annuum)

-2x 'Peppermo' peppers (c. chinense? they were an unidentified pepper from a forum pal I even forgot what they look like)

-2x Kumkuats (citrus japonica)

-4x Ring of Fire Cayenne (c. annuum)

-2x Cayenne (c. annuum)

-2x Red Strawberry Guava (psidium littorale)

I'm only growing two types of chinense this year! what gives?!

Oh, I do have two overwintered Fataliis at work, hoping THIS year I might get a pod off them...

As usual I am including the odd 'non-chilli' so that I can have a bit of variety. I guess I'll find out if citrus seeds keep viable for more than a year, since the kumkuat seeds are from 2007 (I really should check my box o'seeds more often.

I also apologise if this year the entries are fewer and further in between, but I'm in the middle of university stuff, which means spare time is a luxury rather than a commodity (though organisational skills are still a necessity of mine). It's also been the reason why I've been away from almost every single forum I belong to. The responsibilities of further education!

Hope you've all had a good holiday season, and let the growing commence!

:-)