Friday 19 January 2018

Update on chilli and tomato seedlings

As of now, 12 out of the 15 cherry tomato seeds have germinated.

Since there are maximum three tomato seedlings in each tray, they can stay in the propagator trays for a while.
The chillis, both those that came from the seeds I saved from my plants sown in 2016 and 2017, and the mainly sweet pepper varieties I ordered from someone in Greece on eBay, are germinating well too:

1602 is a habenero, not sure of exact variety

1701 could be Yellow Cayenne or Aji Lemon. I quite like these usually medium to hot heat but not as hot as the habeneros

Some of the Greek sweet pepper seeds.
Many of the plants from the previous years are still going strong including the parent plants of some of the seeds above:
1701 is on the left, 1602 on the right.
It remains to be seen how many of the ones that are overwintering in my parents greenhouse will survive and grow back.

Thursday 11 January 2018

Chillis, peppers and tomatoes

After having a propagator for Christmas (and then ordering another one - I now have both the 'self-watering' and heated versions of Garland windowsill propagators) I have started my tomatoes, chillis and sweet peppers for 2018 on the windowsill.

The first to be sown were the cherry tomatoes which went in on 1st Jan:

Three cherry tomato seedlings inside a propagator tray, towered over by chilli plant 1602, which is overwintering indoors and already showing signs of new growth after being pruned. This was actually one of the first chillis I grew in 2016, and was the smallest of all the seedlings in the tray of the 'grow you own chilli kit' someone gave me as a gift. I didn't think it would even survive planting out and it remained very small through the 2016 season, but after coming inside for the winter, and grew much larger in 2017 and produced well. It is some kind of habanero variety not sure exactly what.

I also have kept some of the seeds from my own chilli plants I grew from seed in 2016 and 2017, and ordered a mix of sweet pepper seeds online.


Two trays of seeds from 1602, and a tray of seeds from 1701. In 2016 most of my chilli plants died in the greenhouse after going mouldy in November, although I did bring in 4 indoors before then that survived the winter. None of them produced a lot of chillis in the first season. However the 4 that did survive have grown back well this year and some of them have produced a lot of hot, red habenero chillis. I also bought a mixed pack of chilli seeds. 1701 is a yellow chilli, possibly Yellow Cayenne. I also had some seeds of 1708 and 1715 mixed up sown but not pictured here. I think 1708 is another yellow Cayenne, and 1715 is probably Garden Salsa. I also have a couple of green Jalapeno plants but haven't saved seeds from these. There were also a few more habanero in the 2017 batch but their fruits contained very few seeds.

After eating some mini sweet peppers in a Christmas Antipasti selection that I got reduced from the Co-op, I looked online and it looks like they were Biquinhos. In the end ordered a set of 4 batches of pepper seeds from eBay, of which 3 can be seen here. The 4 varieties were Chocolate Cherry, Peppadew, Biquinho Red and Trinidad Perfume.
These came from Greece courtesy of vonbondies on eBay.