Coffeehouse.co.nz

As I’ve not mentioned them for a while you might have thought you’d escape any more chilli updates… But no. I thought it was about time for a census, so here’s the count as of today:

• 11 Ring of fires on 2 plants (8+3)
• 16 Jalapenos on 2 (7+9)
• 5  Anaheim on 2 (3+2)
• 3 Fresno on 1
• 9 Prarie Fires on 1
• 51 Cherry Bombs on 3 (21+12+18)

So if Bec can add, that equals 84 little bundles of yummy fun. If she can’t, it equals whatever the right total is of little bundle of yummy fun!

In fact, why don’t you have a look and see how they’re going too.  Here they are..

Ring of Fire

Prairie Fire

Jalapenos

Fresno

Actually, while we’re here, there’s a semi-interesting story about the sole remaining Fresno. The Fresnos really didn’t seem to like damp soil around their stems. The stalk of the other Fresno I kept just kind of rotted away and it fell over and died (sob!).

This plant kind of did the same thing. The stalk started to kind of turn black and rot away and the plant fell over, but then it seemed to decide to make a bit more of an effort, and started to turn 90 degrees and grow upwards again with a stalk that’s like a zig-zag kind of thing (if you get what I mean, and I’m sure that you do even without the picture that would be really useful here). And where the  stalk has been lying on the soil it’s just got a lot thicker and seems to have sprouted more roots.  Weird.  But anyway, I’m glad it made it…

I did say it was only semi-interesting!  On with the show…

Anaheim

and the Cherry Bombs

Bec always complains that I never buy her flowers.  Which is true.  I think I’ve even written about that before. But now I think I’ve earned a few Brownie points by giving her a (very small) bunch of flowers I’ve managed to grow myself.

That’s got to be better than just buying them at a service station, surely? And it must go some way to making up for never cleaning the bathroom, doesn’t it?!

She did seem to be a little ungrateful though.  I think she wanted a slightly bigger floral tribute. Humph.

Oh well. there’s still plenty more almost ready on the plants…

This one’s for Megan, who wanted a picture of the lettuce collection for some reason.  We went for 3 types of “cut and come again” greens. In the salad bowl are green lettuce, red lettuce and rocket.

We did plant far too many seeds, but we’re getting better at thinning them out.  The rocket has been a lot slower to get any sort of height, so we’ve had to protect that from being crowded out a bit. I’m not sure really how many that size pot will support. I suspect it’s not too many, but we’ll see.  Our attempt at relocating a couple to the pot that’s now spare due to the unexplained chilli demise doesn’t look like it was too successful…

Happy, Megan?!

I think we need to get Mulder and Scully to come around and have a poke around to see if they can come up with some sort of explanation as to why one, and one one, chilli plant decided to suddenly just go all floppy sometime on Wednesday this week.

I suspect it’s terminal. But I can come up with no reason why it would do that. It was a bit windy that day, but the stalk doesn’t look broken or anything. It’s seemingly just lost the will to live.  I’ll give it one more day to see if it revives, but if not at least it frees up the pot for something else to go in…

In other “garden” news, it’s flowers all round.  We’ve got coriander, sweet pea, chilli and capsicum flowers at the moment. I would like to say it’s pretty colourful, but  really I can’t.  Apart from the sweet peas, everything else is white.  And not particularly nice smelling either. I guess if we want colour we wouldn’t be able to have the veges…

A few radishes are almost at a munchable size, the lettuces are taking over the pot (we really should thin then more, but it seems to mean!),  the baby capsicums are growing daily, the dill and spring onions are still there and I think growing…

All go really!

Tonight as part of our dinner we had a small salad made entirely from our own home grown produce!  Green lettuce, red lettuce, and spring onions! Yum!

Actually, when I say small salad, I really do mean small.  I can’t even call it a mini-salad. It was  more a micro salad made from “micro greens” (i.e. thinnings from the overcrowded pots), but it was still nice to eat what we’ve grown!

By the way, just to give you some idea of scale, the “bowl” it’s in is 7.5cm wide at its widest point!…

Thankfully we did actually have more than that for dinner!

It must be about time to bore you with an update on all the veges etc crammed on the balcony. You are interested, aren’t you? Good!

First up the exciting news on the red peppers: We are now the proud owners of two tiny peppers (one on each of the two plants we’ve got) and a heap more flowers. The only problem is that the plants are only about 6 inches high at their highest point, and the baby peppers are only 4 inches off the ground to start with! I kinda hope that the plants are going to put on a growth spurt so they’ve got more room to dangle, or they might end up sitting on the ground!  Or they’ll just be miniature peppers.

The miniature theme seems to be a general one.  All the chilli plants are also not seeming to get a great deal of height. Yet. I hope! Though they too are starting to look like they’re getting ready to flower too.  It’s about right timing wise, but I’m really sure that the plants have had a lot more height first.  Oh well. I suspect that I chucked them outside a bit soon, and they just hung in there when it was still a bit cold, rather than putting on the growth.

Even the mint plant seems to have decided to live life in the miniature.  All the new leaves that are coming out seem to be staying really, really small too. I don’t think that it’s because we keep grabbing the big ones for cooking, but it might be… We’ll have to see if they get a bit bigger, or I might try putting it in a slightly shadier corner and see if it then feels like expanding it’s leaves a bit more.

Oh, and the sweet peas look like they might be about to put out a flower or two soon as well,  and they’re only about two feet high too! It’s all a little odd!

The only thing that’s got tall is the coriander plant I mentioned the other week.  The flower stalks on that leapt up to about two, almost  three feet tall, and the flowers have just opened today. Hopefully we’ll end up with some seeds sometime.

We had a major catch with the other small coriander plants though. We were sitting out on the balcony enjoying the sun yesterday and for some reason had a good look at one of them and found another little infestation of aphidy things! ARRGGGHHH!  So we gave them all a good once over and squished all the bugs we could find for a bit. There weren’t enough to give up on the plants. It hopefully looks like we can hopefully manage them with daily squishings.  At least the plants are still a manageable size to check every leaf.

The rocket plants are still on the small side too, but the lettuce, onions, dill and radish are all coming along nicely. Far too many for the pots they’re in, I suspect, but we keep giving them a bit of a thin now and then…

So there you have it.  The update. Tune in next time to see if anything has actually grown!

Sob! I think the coriander plant we planted first might have bolted. Not yet having grown much I can’t be too sure, but there appears to be a distinct lack of new leaves appearing, while there are a couple of big, thick, darker stalks with some feathery leaves on the top. To me that makes me suspect it has.

I also suspect from reading a few sites that it’s probably my fault.  I think it might have been due to either replanting it (unlikely, I think) or I’ve perhaps let it get too dry now and then (quite likely!).  It is sharing the pot with the now massive parsley and as there have been some really hot days a while ago I think I might have just left watering it a bit long.  It’s always hard to know how damp the pots are. Must start sticking my finger in more often.

It’s a good job that I planted another few seeds a few weeks later.  I’ll just have to keep an eye on those plants and see if I can avoid the same happening to them.

The only good news in all of this is that if it has bolted, and we get lots of flowers that don’t get blown off in the very windy weather we seem to have at the moment, and if we do get a a bunch of seeds, and if we do manage to catch all the seeds somehow, then we can use those in our cooking anyway! Stay tuned for that…

As we had a bit of dirt left, and a few pots, we decided to see what else we can grow on the balcony.  We chucked a few spring onion, lettuce (2 lots of cut and come again stuff), rocket, radish and dill seeds in pots today.

Now to see if they grow!

There is still room to sit on the balcony in chairs and enjoy the sun, honest!

In chilli news, nothing much is going on really.  The plants seem to all be having a bit of a rest after their re-potting, hopefully before a big growing spurt. Either that or it’s been a bit cold for them still outside. Fingers crossed for them anyway…

It happens every chilli growing season.  The day that the little sprouts are transferred out into the big, wide pots.

I think we (I) might have overestimated the compost requirements somewhat this year, as after putting all 11 chilli plants in big pots and  potting up some of the coriander seeds that I’d planted a few weeks ago we’ve still got a fair bit left.  Oh well.  I guess we’ll get another few pots and try some lettuce or something… And it’s definitely better than having to take yet another trip to a garden centre to get dirt.  Of course we’ll have to go to a garden centre to get lettuce seeds or something, but that’s different!

Although making another trip to a garden centre might just be the end of us. Yesterday’s trip home from one was a bit of a disaster. I was not flavour of the month after deciding we should take a bus that was due to terminate close to our place.  How was I to know that it was going to wander all over town (and “town” in London is quite a big area!) first before getting there!

Ok, so I should have remembered that we’d caught it before and been caught out before too, but that was over a year ago now… And why Bec ever chose to listen to me and get on a bus is still a mystery. I don’t really do buses.  I’m more of a tube kind of guy.

Anyway, I still have no idea where everything is going to go once it starts getting a bit bigger, but we’ll find somewhere…

And I think I’m glad it only happens once  a year.  My back is feeling the effects of bending over for so long sorting them all out!

We seem to be having a decent period of (relatively) hot, sunny weather at the moment.  Perfect for the balcony garden.

So most days all the plants get chucked out on the balcony, and then if we’re home they get pushed around to make sure they’re in the sun for the maximum time each day. We’ve even managed to get motivated enough to re-pot Bec’s capsicums and the largest chilli.  The rest will have to be done over the next couple of weeks. Might have to go get a bit more dirt first though. We’ve had to make a few trips to the garden centres for bags of mix so far this season. It’s a bit too hard to get all that we need in one trip and get it all on the tube.  But at least it’s given us something to do i the weekends when we got bored enough.

I’m also relieved to report that so far I’ve not found any other infestations of aphids.  Still keeping fingers crossed on that!