Misty mornings and a continuous fire means winter is well on its way. This is our first winter on the land, and we have semi-prepared.
November has been an interesting month in the garden, bringing us great crops! we harvested the remainder of our chilli and sweet pepper plants and had a huge amount of fruit, many are unripe but we got to get them all before the frost does!
Varieties we grew
Cayenne Diane chilli, a mild but tangy heat, grew well with not much attention given. Started off in trays on the windowsill in February, planted out into the greenhouse in May. I had so many young plants I decided to grow some in pots for the comparison. overall plants put in the ground grew much bigger, healthier, bearing more fruit than those in pots. However, late September I was able to move those in pots into the polytunnel in an attempt to get even more out of them! They are still going and have a good crop of healthy red chillies just waiting to be picked.
Nigels Outdoor green chilli, sweet refreshing flavour but no heat. The seeds came from The Real Seed Company, easy to grow, little support and bear lots of fruit! These seeds are a variety that grows well in the UK climate which is great as I can’t handle the heat anyway!
Spaghetti chilli, very mild, grows massive and bears a huge amount of fruit! Very ornamental plant and might need some support if grown in a pot but easy and well worth it!
Scotch bonnet, too hot. I will be slowly training my taste buds to spice in preparation for next season!
Sweet Peppers
We also had a small harvest of Sweet Peppers which were started from seed indoors back in February and March.
California Wonder is a great traditional bell pepper, they grew well in the greenhouse, and gave us a great yieldas of late august! Although we didn’t get many to ripen red, they were huge! They really had that fresh flavour and were often used as a Green Pepper Salsa to go alongside a hearty winter chorizo stew and Roasted Sweet Potato!
Lipstick pepper was another, full of flavour and ready before the others, it’s pointy fruits ripen to red however we were a bit eager…
Lessons learnt
Chillies need a long hot summer. Next year I think we will be sowing our seed indoors even earlier, and being able to grow in the Polytunnel next year will definitely help extend the growing season!
Cut back big leaves to allow sunlight to reach the fruits and help them ripen! Also remove the lower leaves that give access to slugs and snails or they will go straight for the fruit!
We used most of our Chillies in Tomato sauce Preserve we made with our homegrown tomatoes and herbs. Next year we will be growing on a larger scale and look forward to growing lots of different varieties and creating some super hot chilli sauces!
-
Growing Dahlias from Seed and overwintering tubers
One of our latest plant obsessions is the Dahlia, since growing them from seed and realising just how easy it is to get many years out of these lovely plants. I first attempted these many years ago, with a tray of seed under my living room radiator. It was so successful it led me to… Read more
-
2019 Growing: Chilli and Sweet Pepper Review
T’was a hot summer here in the south of England, and our first with the new polytunnel We couldn’t wait to see how our chilli peppers would grow in comparison to previous years being grown in the ground in the old greenhouse. This year we grew chillies in there, as well as in pots and… Read more
-
First Summer in the Polytunnel
2019 is our first summer having the Polytunnel and we’re sharing our successes and failures that came along with it. We have absolutely loved it and couldn’t have hoped for better results when it comes to our growing goals. We did come across some challenges including Managing the Environment. But we also learnt that we’re able… Read more
-
Growing Summer Hanging Baskets
We’re sharing our experience from start to finish including which plants we used, compost, fertiliser and a review of the whole process. Including failures!
-
First Spring In the Polytunnel
We have been busy for the last couple of months growing our seedlings indoors and transferring them to the tunnel in preparation for various growing projects.
-
Installing the Polytunnels
Summer 2018 Before we went for it and installed the tunnels we did a lot of research and tried to avoid the common fails, but we still had some epic ones including ripping a hole in the plastic! Luckily for us we already had the steel hoops in the ground as it was used many… Read more
-
First winter in the polytunnel
In summer 2018 we invested in two 22m long polytunnels which we use to over winter plants, start seedlings off and house young plants. Maintaining a constant temperature inside the tunnel is difficult as we currrently do not have any heating system in place. Ideas for next winter especially, we are considering an indoor compost… Read more
-
Chilli and Sweet Pepper harvesting in November
Misty mornings and a continuous fire means winter is well on its way. This is our first winter on the land, and we have semi-prepared. November has been an interesting month in the garden, bringing us great crops! we harvested the remainder of our chilli and sweet pepper plants and had a huge amount of… Read more
-
The Journey Begins
From City to Rural Homegrownandhopeful is the start of a a new chapter in which we said yes to an amazing opportunity to change our life from city to rural. We have taken on a small plot of land in the beautiful South of England where we are growing our own fruit and vegetables, and… Read more
