Work While Drunk

This year I’m going to take it a bit easier and only grow 4 varieties. I was only going to grow 3, but I was sent a free packet of Tepin’s from Nicky’s Seeds. So this year I am growing:

• Cherry Bomb F1 Hybrid
• Habanero Orange
• Jalapeno Purple
• Tepin

You can see more details on these varieties on my Growing List @ TheChileMan.org. I wanted Cancun Habaneros (AKA Yucatan Sunshine Habenaros – if I understand the varieties correctly) but I couldn’t find them to buy. However as far as I can tell they are similar to, or may well in fact actually be, Orange Habaneros. My Tepins really struggled last year – they were the only variety not to flower, and along with the Tabascos, didn’t bear any fruit.

I’ve also entered TheChileMan.Org’s Jalapeno Growing Competition. I finished about 45th last year in the Big Jim growing competition, which wasn’t too impressive.

So all I need now is a long hot summer, like that of 2003 European Heatwave – that was an awesome summer, unlike 2007’s wettest summer on record.

My Chile pepper plans didn’t quite work out as well as I’d hoped. My crop wasn’t very successful and people who adopted some of my plants had similar mixed results. The main factor was simply the weather. Obviously Chilli plants are not native to the UK, but they should have fared OK, except that we really didn’t have much sun this summer. That was particularly annoying in a general sense, especially considering the MET office repeatedly predicted a very hot summer.

I ended up with about 2/3 good plants from each variety. I didn’t get any Tepin or Tabasco fruits, and the Serrano’s did very poorly too (only 3). The rest (Anaheim, Guajillo, Big Jim and Jalapeno) bore 5-10 fruits each. A handful are just finishing ripening off.

What I’ve generally leant is:

• I have a good success rate at growing seedlings
• Chilli plants defiantly flourish in very sunny warm weather
• They don’t like being overwatered
• Re-pot to larger pots as soon as possible
• Don’t be afraid to leave them outside
• Some organic pesticides damage the Chilli plants
• I need a greenhouse (yet I don’t have room) and a south facing garden (mine is ENE)… Or in other words I need to move house

I’ve also had a LOT of pest problems and I’ve learnt:

• Slugs can strip the plants in no time at all, and the copper tape doesn’t stop the larger ones
• Greenfly are easy to control using organic pesticides, but it doesn’t eradicate them
• None of the organic pesticides I tried killed spider mites, which themselves cause a lot of damage if not killed
• Fungus Gnats are as annoying as hell and a pain to control, even though they cause little damage

The moving house bit isn’t completely a joke. I’ve only been in this one for a year, and very much like Welwyn Garden City, but neither I nor Emma re really in love with this house, and we now have a much better idea of what we want – plus we’ve been watching It’s Not Easy being Green and have a lot of ideas we want to pursue, but can’t at this property.

So, I’m going to try again next year. I’ve got all of the eqipment, so it won’t cost much next tiem around. This time I will pick just 3 varieties, not 7. Now I just need to decide on which 3 to grow…

My chilli plants are doing well, despite the arrival of a new pest – the fungus gnat. I have now given several people plants from my stock, keeping the best of course. I’ve gotten rid of the truly sick ones, and I’m now left with some really good plants. I’ve re-potted the larger ones into the final (for now) 20cm pots. The ones that are lagging a bit (predominantly the Tepins and Tobascos) are still filling out in the 12cm pots. The biggest of my plants (a Serrano that for some reason is twice the size of its brethren) is not much shy of 1m. Most of the Anaheims and Guajillos are around 60-70cm. About 3 weeks ago the first few started to flower. This is from a Guajillo:

A mere 2 weeks later and I have a few fledgling chillies that look like this (from the same Guajillo):

And that particular one (which was the first) has come along in leaps and bounds in a mere handful of days to this:

It shouldn’t be too long before I can start reaping the rewards of my efforts. So long as I can just keep the pests at bay.

Its proving harder to be a chile pepper farmer than I originally anticipated. From 100 seeds, I ended up with about 90 seedlings. The weather wasn’t too great so they stayed in the heated propagator for a bit longer than they could have. I then re-potted them a few months ago and put them outside in my grow house. Since then its not been going so well.

First they got attacked by ants. I didn’t think much of that to begin with. No problem I thought, ants have no interest in these plants, so they’ll just eat any aphids that try their luck. Nope, that was a bad assumption. Sure they didn’t want the seedlings… to the point that they actually made homes in the seed trays and turfed the seedlings out. So I had to move the grow house and get rid of the ants.

Then we had a really windy spell, and the grow house got blown over. This is when the real casualties were incurred. I lost 5 or so from total leaf loss, broken stems, etc. I tried to nurse the rest back to health, but some of them are still looking a tad worse for wear.

I thought that was going to be the worst of it for a while but then somehow some slugs and snails traversed my entire barren patio, scaled the grow house (1m high) and slipped in the vent at the top. About 10 of the buggers. They’ve stripped a couple of now small plants to almost nothing. Some of them they have just eaten away at the stem at the bottom. I’m still fighting them off too. Every day I find another slug or two inside. My copper tape is on order…

And now the green fly are having a go. Thankfully their number is few, and easy to manage thus far, but the organic aphid killer is in the same order as the anti-slug copper tape. I pre-empted this pest. I want to keep the growing of these chile peppers as organic as possible, but frankly my patience is already wearing thin. I’ve got months and months to go and I’m already seeing casualties. Of my 100 seeds and then 90 seedlings I’m down to:

• 11 Anaheim
• 9 Big Jim
• 14 Guajillo
• 19 Jalapeno
• 7 Serrano
• 9 Tabasco
• 14 Tepin

That’s a total of 83, and of those I know at least 3 of them have got a hell of an uphill struggle to grow into fully fledged plants. Still, my old man (who’s had a career in exotic agriculture) assures me that plants can be remarkably hardy.

I’ve taken 2 of each variety (actually 3 of the Jalapenos) to my Mum’s B&B in Lincolnshire (Browntoft House) – this is my ‘Chile Pepper Arc’, my backup plan. All these issues aside, some of the plants are coming along very well. Especially the Big Jims, the Guajillos and the Jalapenos. The Serranos and the Anaheims are doing ok too. The Tepins and the Tabascos are struggling the most – in fact there’s quite a few there that don’t seem to be growing much at all, and look pretty pale and scrawny. Either way, providing the weather warms back up, and I have no more disasters, I should still have a pretty good crop. I plan on re-potting the larger ones this weekend to encourage them further.

Yesterday I started my crop of chile peppers. I have seven varieties of chile peppers currently sitting in some John Innes #1 seeding compost, in separate seed propagation chambers on an electric propagator. I’m growing:

• Anaheim
• Guajillo
• Jalapeno
• Numex Big Jim
• Serrano
• Tabasco
• Tepin

The Tabasco and Tepin chile seeds were a gift from my boss, who grew me a great crop of Scotch Bonnet Habanero chile peppers last summer, which I’m still using up. The Anaheim, Guajillo, Jalapeno and Serrano are specifically for my Mexican cooking. And lastly the Numex Big Jim seeds are for the Guinness World Record attempt competition over at TheChileMan.org.

Here’s a full detailed list of what I’m growing:

• http://www.thechileman.org/growing_list.php?list=1874,1517,3184,154,1318,3340,3312

And, if you know where to look, you can find me on the map:

• http://www.thechileman.org/worldmap.php

It should be a good year for growing chile peppers this year, if the predicted El Nino weather system comes to fruition, as chile peppers apparently love the sun. Fingers crossed. I still have to build the mini-greenhouse I have planned though. That’s assuming my seeds germinate. Someone pointed out today I might have planted too many. I planted about 15-20 seeds of 7 varieties. If they all germinate that’s about 100 seedlings. Each which may give 10-30 chile peppers depending on variety. That means a whole big harvest of chile peppers. Shocking, but potentially fantastic.

Only thing now is, that I’m completely impatient. Hurry up and grow already!