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Rainy day today, and the last day of the long weekend, so it was time to re-pot the chillis into their last, big pots. I should really have done it a couple of weeks ago, I think. Some of them were pretty root-bound and were a bit smaller than their matching plant that had been in a slightly bigger medium pot, but hopefully they’ll be fine. Hasn’t seemed to stop them flowering etc.

Gave me a good chance to count the chillis that have appeared. There are 16 actual chillis to date between the Ring of Fire, Prarie Fire and Riots. Still non chillis on the Zimbabwe Bird Pepper plants, but they look like they’re about to explode with a heap of flowers really soon (although there is one flower out now on one of them).

Here’s the first Riot chilli of the year too.

The observant among you will notice that these ones seem to start off yellow instead of the green as in the below post.

The really observant among you will notice that unlike the Ring of Fire below, this plant rotates upwards when it’s pollenated so the chilli points up. The Ring of Fires start to droop quickly, I guess so they can easily support the weight of the bigger chillis. Weird to watch it happen. Happens over about 2 days. One day I must see if I can get a time lapse film of it all happening.

Woke up this morninga nd struggled down to get a coffee and noticed that the first flower had dropped off. Thought “bugger, the shaking didn’t work” as when they don’t pollenate the flowers just all drop off and get me in trouble for messy bits being all over the window sills. But then I looked more closely, and lo and behold, the first chilli of the year is starting to take shape!

It’s weird how they grow though. As soon as the flowers are pollenated the ring of petals sort of fall off to leave the long stamen-y thing of the flower attached to the little growing chilli. That normally falls off sometime a bit later. Sometimes it doesn’t. And sometimes the petal ring gets a bit stuck and sticks around the growing chilli like a tu-tu and I have to go around pulling them off. Gardener’s work is never done…

Finally the process that started in June last year is finally over, and the block of land at Cust is finally all ours!

Now the hard work of working out just what to put on it and where and when and why etc. starts.

I figure that might take a bit longer even than this first bit!

Thought it would happen this week, and it has!

I’ve given it a good old shake, so I guess we’ll see if it’s the first chilli soon too.

They’re growing!  They’re growing well!

In fact, some of them have the start of flowers popping out.  I suspect the first actual flower will be sometime this week for the  Ring of Fires, and the others don’t look too far behind.  In the last couple of weeks they’ve all started to take on their own types of foliage and stalk angles.  I can almost tell them apart now by just looking, rather than reading the labels on the pots, but not quite.  Almost time I re-potted them up to their final pots, I think…  Maybe next weekend.

A couple of you seem to be interested in the progress of the chillis. Well, you asked me about them. Whether that means that you’re really interested or not, I won’t ask.

But here they are. About a month on from when they were first planted out as little seeds. And they’re just starting to really take off. It took ages for them to start getting their third leaves, but then for most of them the forth, fifth, even sixth have come along really quickly. It’ll soon be time to repot them again, I suspect. I think I learnt my lesson last year and remember that the roots are a lot bigger than the tops at this early stage. Don’t want to stunt their growth!

The hard part so far has been having to give some away already without really being able to tell which had the most Ooomph so I just had to guess which were going to be the fast growing, heaviest yeilding plants. We’ll see if my chilli instincts were right later on.

2 weeks on, and the first of the chilli plants to pop their heads up are going to need to be transplanted into some little pots tomorrow. They’re just about hitting the top of the seed lid cover! They are actually a lot bigger than they look in the photo below.

I’m really happy that I seem to have the knack of sprouting the seeds though. Some people seem to have all sorts of trouble, but they always seem to come up pretty quickly for me. I planted 12 (ish) of each of the 4 types, so I’ll have far, far too many plants for the window sills we’ve got if they all sprout! I suspect the hard part is going to be keeping track of which is which soon.

If you’re interested in which are doing what (and even if you’re not), it’s like this…

• Riot: These are the most advanced. They were the first up, have the most up, and are the tallest so far, not surprisingly.
• Ring of Fire: These are the next most advanced. Not quite so many up, but the ones that are are starting to overtake the Riots.
• Zimbabwe Bird Pepper: These were fairly slow to get going, and the ones that have come up are a lot smaller than the first 2 types.
• Prarie Fire: These have been the slowest of the lot to poke their heads up. In fact they haven’t really. Though I can see the start of the shoots appearing at ground level… Shouldn’t be long now!

So. There you have it! All the goss!

And yes. This is the most exciting thing that’s happened in the last week. Still, at least it’s more interesting than watching grass grow…

Last night just before I went to bed I checked the chilli seeds. No action visible. This morning when I checked them (yes, I do that, just don’t think I’m that obsessed OK?) most of them have popped their little heads up!

Yippee!!

And when I walked out the front door, the first of the crocus bulbs has got a flower-to-be head thingee on it, again overnight!

Only thing is, I’d like just a little bit more snow, please, before we get rid of winter for the year? Please?!

As it’s so mild lately, as we got so domesticated with the front garden this morning, and as I just want some early chillis to eat, I decided to plant this year’s batch of chilli seeds. It also gives me a good chance to plant some more in case these ones just don’t grow. Not that they would do that to me, of course!

This year’s choices are: Prarie Fire, Riot, Zimbabwe Bird Pepper, and some more Ring of Fire. So you can look forward (hopefully) to a lot more on them soon!

I know you’re looking forward to it! As if you have a choice!