Tag Archives: Chilli

You’ve got me danglin’ on a string, please don’t let me drop

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A few years ago, our music/gardening friend Phil Harmony from Berlin told us that he brought his chilli plants indoors over the winter as they’re perennials and can live for several years. That was quite a revelation to us.

This year, we’ve revived the tradition and now there’s a thriving chilli plant on the kitchen windowsill, alongside some peppers and pelargoniums and even though it’s looking a bit crowded there, they all seem to look healthy and there’s new flowers coming so that’s a good sign.

The other year we had a bit of a surplus of chillies. We tried drying them out on a plate and then putting them in a jar, but they shrivelled up and looked anything but appetising. Every time someone reached into the jar for one it felt more like they were brewing some sort of magic concoction that needed “a leg of toad, a wing of bat…” The jar got chucked out in the end.

This year, we’ve gone for the “dangling-them-from-a-string” approach instead, and it seems to work! They’ve started ripening turning from green to yellow and hopefully they’ll dry properly without looking too odd to use. We can’t remember the variety but they are pretty hot and just one seems to be ample to put in a dish. Any tips for keeping chillies out there?

We had joy, we had fun, we had a season in the sun

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Last weekend we returned from a week away visiting some great East Sussex locations such as Camber Sands, Eastbourne and Brighton. Weather weren’t too bad (a bit of rain in the morning but usually sunny in the afternoon) but it has seemed to have changed when we got back home. Everything in the garden is now winding down, the tomatoes have their last fruit on them, the cosmos are still going (more on those later) and the giant sunflower (from seed bought off ebay) is doing great, following the sun as usual (more on that here).

We brought in the houseplants that were having a holiday outside, a chilli in a pot which will hopefully survive the winter and be back outside in the garden as they are technically perennials and even a couple of the pelargoniums taken from cuttings from the ones at the local train station. Why not? It’s nice to have a bit of the outside indoors.

Our north London correspondent Debby H has suggested we should get a page together of how people’s cosmos did this year and have a bit of a gallery going on and we think it’s a great idea. If the slugs got at your seedlings earlier on, don’t worry we will repeat it next year but any pictures of your cosmos to one deck pete (at) gee mail dot com please.

Also a massive shout and thanks to Jon Harris from the excellent multi-genre music  show called Coughing Pigeon on Brum Radio here. On the 1st August show they played Madtone Safety Council V BiggaBush‘s Lock your bike at 01.15. The show continues in the usual unusual way with all sorts of great stuff from the dubby to this wonderful tune from Christie Laume called Rouge Rouge, wonderful stuff indeed.

 

As it says on the website “You should approach every Coughing Pigeon show with a degree of both certainty and curiosity about what you will hear. Household names feature alongside the relatively unknown in a quest to create a unique listening experience” and they are right!

Our friends in Kyiv

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A big thanks as always to our good friend Wlad (US7IGN) in Kyiv for sending us some more excellent pictures. The first is his Dill seedlings (above) that look like they’re doing very well.

Wlad also wrote of the other plants he started off as well “The garlic also remained small for a long time, but then simply dried out” and his potato plant is growing but seems to have stood still for a while (pics above).

It’s funny as we’re having problems on some of the seedlings on our windowsill too, we’ve got some chilli and tomato seedlings and they are not doing much else after growing their seed leaves and one set of a normal leaf. There looks like there’s some sort of greenfly about but they don’t seem to be bothering any of the other sunflower seedlings or sweet peas. Any ideas?

As for his Wlad’s good mate Sergiy (UT3UFD) his banana is doing very well! It looks well healthy and so does his date palm (above). Great stuff!

We always think of Sergiy’s plant when we pass the banana plant that is in a front garden in SE23. We have no idea if bananas are supposed to survive the british weather but this one seems to! Cheers again to Wlad and Sergiy for the pics and we look forward to seeing more.

And news just in from Berlin…

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Big shout to our good friend Phil Harmony out of Berlin who’s made a start on his great balcony plot which we’ve featured a few times here on Weeds (one of a few posts here).

He’s got some chilli’s on the go from a nice little kit (above), a basil plant from last year, tomatoes, salad and trying some radish and sunflowers. Phil mentioned growing scarlett runner beans (aka feuerbohne or fire beans) on his balcony plot too. Good stuff!

And for this post Phil nominates this mix from Peter Kruder from a couple of years back.

Brilliant stuff Phil. Keep those progress reports and tunes coming!