One thing I can do while sick is start my chilli farm blog. This year I'm planning to grow ten varieties of chillis for various purposes. I acquired the seeds recently and planted them into a propagator. This now sits by the window sill where it gets sun for about three quarters of the day. I'll water this very lightly (with a spray bottle) more or less daily.
There are about 2-3 chilli seeds in each punnet, so around 4 - 6 seeds for each variety. Hopefully most of these will germinate. When the seedlings have emerged and have two leaves I will thin them by removing the weaker of each variety. I want to wind up with two healthy plants for each variety by summer. Once the seedlings are big enough they will be transplanted into the vege garden, and I'll probably build a support wire for some of them.
One problem is that I'm not sure how big each of these will get. I've only grown ordinary chillies that you see everywhere in NZ - I think they're Asian Fire, but I'm not sure. Anyway, apparently some varieties get much bigger and grow like a bush. I'll have to have a read up on each one before planting.
See the picture below. The varieties, from left to right, are:
Malaga Bird
Thai Chilli
Scotch Bonnet
Brazilian Hot
Bhut Jolokia - the world's hottest chilli
Jalapeno
Cayenne
Hungarian Wax
Wildfire
Harbenero (mixed colours)
I'll keep an update here each time there's something worth posting.
(click to embiggen)
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Grow more, Chilli's sell wholesale for round $160kg at the end of winter.
Yeah because no one can grow the things this time of the year
I can, however, sell you some frozen chillies at around that price.
I have a massive chili farm right next to me. Actually this whole region is chili country
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeongyang
Awesome, sneak me home some seeds.
Wiki says Bhut not the hottest in the world, but I am interested with what you will do with it... I mean even a slice of it would probably be too hot to put into food? (and i love chilli!)
Woah I see there are a couple of hotter ones still. I've never seen seeds for the Infinity Chilli or the Viper Pepper. Maybe next year.
I don't know what I'll do with the Bhut Jolokias. I'll make sauces/jams from a lot of the chillies, but I don't know if I could stand to even taste the hotter ones on their own. I'll probably dry or freeze a number of chillies, but it seems a waste to dry the Bhut Jolokia.
chilli eating comp? you dave martin brad?
This is awesome, I'm very interested to see how it goes. Harbeneros are my favourite chilli ever so I want to grow them one day. And yes, I'll definitely eat some of the Bhut on its own.
I'll see if I have any spare harb seeds I can send you. I got these sweet little just-add-water peat pots you could try growing it in.
I'm in for the chilling eating comp, how long till these will be ready Chris?
Probably not till late December or January.
I'm so going to shuffle the pots around when I come down, it will be hilarious when you bite into a bhut when you think it's just a jalapeno
hahaha but youll be eating too brad!!
I'm actually thinking that I'll tie tags around the plants when they're big enough for this very reason.
Things are happening more slowly than I expected. I had a couple of mishaps (seeds too deep, plus Jill made me drop it and lose a bunch of soil/seeds at one point), so I'm not sure how well everything is going to go. Anyway, today I finally had my first sign of action (click to embiggen):
Also, check out my new mini greenhouse:
Oh yeah, and all the labels got mixed up so I'm not really sure what's what any more.
'Jill made you drop it' whatever you're just a klutz!!!
Awesome greenhouse!
$30, guess where? Bunnings, oh yeah. I'm gonna do all my seed raising in there. Currently raising corn (yes, I'm growing corn, like a farmer) and beans (plus there's some tomatoes and cucumbers I bought but haven't planted).
Think you can handle not looking up what the chillis pcitures look like and just risking what chilli is what when you use then? go on... i dare you!!!!!
(also nice blame on jill
)
It was Jill's fault - I had the propagator in the hot water cupboard, and she moved ti to it was balancing precariously on the edge of a shelf. When I opened the door, a light breeze/fumbling fingers lightly touched the propagator and it fell to the ground =<
What camera did you use for the above two pictures?
The Lumix you gave me. I still don't know how to use it
I should get a photo of the women working on the mound of chilis. This one is just a small pile compared to others I see:
I pass this on my to work every day. I don't know how long they've been working at it, but I know there is other places in town they do this. It's just a small shed off an alleyway.
Mother of god...
I'm declaring this experiment a complete and utter failure. Better luck next year.
Next year I'll do it a bit differently - I'll get them started ASAP by soaking the seeds in bleach for a couple of days, then trying to sprout them in damp tissue or cotton wool. I didn't realise going into this that chillis are amoung the more difficult seeds to germinate successfully.
On the positive side, my other seeds are going well. Just put some more courgettes, cucumbers and snowpeas in, though I won't be able to harvest any of these until late summer.
Seeds like bleach?
So I read.
So I read.
seems like a sure fire way to fail... i think someone is trolling chris haha