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?
A big thanks to Debby H for sending us some pictures of her garden that’s come on a bit since she went away for few weeks. The above is of the first cosmos flowers.
Above is the radio related Marconi red pepper which is doing very well and her second pepper plant (below) is looking good too.
Earlier this year we were very kindly given some Comfrey roots by our gardening friend Ruth as the plants we did have went to pot when the new fence got put in. Before then we were regularly giving out Comfrey liquid as it’s super stuff but as we had no Comfrey we had nothing to give out.
We heard some great advice when we were out and about this week and it was a simple “Don’t give up”. Quite apt as we were going to put in some fresh seeds into one of the trays in the propagator in the kitchen windowsill next week as we thought the Cape Gooseberry seed sown in there was shot as the Peppers we planted at the same time now have their seed leaves and are looking good. Then this morning we spotted some action in the tray, patience that’s what gardening’s all about and sometimes we ain’t any!
It’s mad, the photo above shows the raised beds just before lockdown in March. My, how time’s flown eh? How many week’s have we been lockdown for? 14, 15, 16? The garden isn’t bothered how long though, it’s cracking on and with this present warm and wet weather here in London it’s getting on with what it does best. Look at those raised beds now (below), the spuds (Two bags of seed potatoes from
We’ve pulled out a few handfuls of spuds from around the potato plants making sure that the plant wasn’t disturbed too much and then we piled the earth/compost over the crown of the plant so any spuds near the surface wouldn’t have the chance to turn green. And here’s the spuds (below), we’re confused if they’re the first earlies, second earlies or premature maincrop ones. It doesn’t really matter, they tasted excellent and what did they taste of? Yes potatoes but real potatoes!
Now we’re off the furlough we’re only spending the lunchhour and after work gardening and much of the big work was done when we were off. Once you get a good headstart on yourself, gardening gets a lot easier but it’s getting that start. We managed to keep the bed on the right hand side (below) a lot tidier than usual and even stuck in some tomatoes, cabbages and spuds amongst the flowers. The comfrey we use daily, pulling off massive handfuls to stick in the compost heap and for putting in holes before we transplant something. That keeps the comfrey under control as it can swamp everything if it gets its way!
And talk about best laid plans and all that, this bed below was supposedly going to be rested this year and was going to be full of the
Weeds up to me knees 