Saturday, 18 September 2010

Unable to Post for a week

Right, So I'm off back to uni tomorrow taking in all 8 fully mature chilli plants, lighting rig and all of the stuff I've accumulated over the years. Had to order a transit to fit them all in and I've had to pack them all in around my uni stuff. I'll let you know how my Chilli plants cope with the journey when I get back online at uni.

Cheers for Visiting guys, I'm adding more recipes and grow tips in a week when I'm back.

Thursday, 16 September 2010

Colder night sweeping in

Riight, so I'm in the UK, days are getting shorter and colder and chilli plants everywhere are starting to suffer from it. If like me your finding your plants are starting to drop a few leaves, but you still have pods that you want nice and ripe before you let the plant give up for winter.

There's a couple of options at this stage, I personally like to stretch every last little bit of fruit from my plant before retiring it. This being the case today meant the first day of my retreat inside, my more sensitive plant the Bhut Jolokia has been bought inside and put in a south facing window. In this position it should be provided with enough light and heat to continue to produce fruit for another month or two.

Although the plant is in a south facing window I've opted to use two 65w CFL's, 1 at 2700k temp and 1 at 6400k temp to just boost it with that little bit more light.

The plant really seems to be thriving doing this at the moment, so yeh, If I were you guys I'd get them inside and stretch the life of those plants!

Happy Growing! x

Chilli Jam/Chutney Recipe

Ingredients:



  • 200g De-seeded Chillies
  • 1kg Jam sugar
  • 500ml Cider Vinegar
  • Sterilised jars with a vinegar proof lid

Optional Extra Ingredients:



  • 100g peppers or different chilli variety (experiment for different flavours) If you don't decide to add this increase original chilli amount to 300g
  • Orange zest creates an entirely different taste but makes a nice sandwich filler

Cooking Instructions:

First put all chillies and peppers in a blender and blend until they are small with no bigger chunks. Once the peppers are small put both the sugar and vinegar in a pan and let the sugar melt into it over a lowish heat without stirring. Once all of the sugar is dissolved add the chillies, peppers and orange zest and boil for around 10 minutes.

After the 10 minutes take the pan off the heat and leave to cool, as the mixture cools it becomes thicker and the ingredients will spread evenly throughout the mixture becoming a tasty jam.


Thanks x

Wednesday, 8 September 2010

Changes...



Right, so I've changed the layout of the blog, guides for growing chillies show up on the right now and can easily be selected based on the topic titles.

The main reason for the change is that it allows me to blog be more interactive with readers on the main page, if you have any questions at all about growing chillies, drop me a comment and i'll try and answer it within a day or two. Better still leave your email with the comment and I can get back to you directly.

LINKS TO TOPICS