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Sally Nex

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Sally Nex

Tag Archives: chillies

Postcard from Chelsea: Edible Chelsea

26 Friday May 2017

Posted by sallynex in exotic edibles, new plants, shows

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

chillies, dragon's breath, giant vegetables, oranges, potatoes, RHS Chelsea Flower Show, snake gourds, vertical gardening

Great to see the veg back at Chelsea. We had a brief flurry of edible love back in the mid-noughties, when the GYO trend was riding high, but in recent years they’ve gone back to hiding behind the skirts of flouncier irises, alliums and other glamourpusses.

No longer. This year there were pistachios on the Best in Show garden and potatoes in the Pavilion (to be fair, they never really went away). Even the RHS Plant of the Year was an edible (the genuinely ground-breaking dwarf mulberry ‘Charlotte Russe’). For a dedicated food grower like me, it was heaven.

The Chris Evans Taste Garden


I really liked the Radio 2 Feel Good gardens this year. They had all the Chelsea pizazz but were more accessible than the more highbrow show gardens: these were true crowd-pleasers, and unashamedly so. None more than the Chris Evans Taste Garden, designed by talented edibles specialist Jon Wheatley and packed with astonishingly perfect vegetables grown by Suttons Seeds’ secret weapon, Terry Porter, whose slightly arcane specialism is producing show-standard vegetables out of season for the flower shows.

I loved everything about this garden: and particularly the big trough full of cutting flowers at the back (including a ginger dahlia, ‘Cheyenne’, in tribute to Chris Evans’s famous carrot top). Just goes to show, you can squeeze a cutting garden in just about anywhere.

The Viking Cruises Garden of Inspiration (gold)

Sarah Eberle


My favourite of all the Artisan Gardens this year. And just look at that orange tree. I have seen orange trees in Italy, France and Florida. But never have I seen one as perfectly orangey as this one. Mouthwatering.

The Potato Story (gold)

Morrice and Ann Innes

Into the Pavilion now, and potato enthusiasts Morrice and Ann Innes became the first exhibit in the history of the show to win a gold medal for a display of potatoes. But what a display. I thought I know a bit about spuds, but came away from this realising quite how far I have yet to go. Morrice (resplendent in his kilt) told me he grows every single one of the 140 varieties on display each year. Only six or so tubers of each, granted, but they take up about half a hectare of back garden. Now that’s dedication.

Robinson Seed & Plants (Silver Gilt)

Loads of unusual veg on the immaculate Robinsons stand. Many, like achocha and cucamelons, I’ve grown already. But these snake gourds turned my head. Apparently, as well as eating them or making medicines from them, you can also turn them into didgeridoos. Who knew.

Also on the Robinsons stand was a rather fabulous edible wall, planted in pockets. This lot included American land cress, watercress, parsley, red-veined sorrel, Bull’s Blood beetroot, rocket, two types of lettuce, electric daisies, New Zealand spinach and asparagus peas. Not bad for a ‘wall’ that measured no more than about 3ft wide by 2ft high.

Tom Smith Plants (Silver Gilt)


And I just had to give a mention to the hottest exhibit in the Pavilion. One for masochists, sorry, chilli lovers everywhere, ‘Dragon’s Breath’ was bred pretty much by accident by Mike Smith, owner of Denbighshire nursery Tom Smith’s Plants. He sent the fruits off to Nottingham Trent University, and much to his surprise they returned with a scorching 2.48 million reading on the Scoville Heat scale. Just to put that into context, the current world record holder, the notorious Carolina Reaper, hits a mere 2.2 million. Mike is now awaiting confirmation from the Guinness Book of Records. Apparently if you were actually stupid enough to swallow one of these little fruits – just a couple of centimetres across – you would be fairly likely to die of anaphylactic shock. The law of natural selection in action, you might say.

Life in the greenhouse: August

21 Sunday Aug 2016

Posted by sallynex in exotic edibles, greenhouse, kitchen garden

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Aji chillies, aubergines, chillies, cucamelons, cucumbers, green peppers, heritage tomatoes, heritage vegetables, life in the greenhouse, overwintering chillies, tomatoes

IMG_4025

Summertime… and the watering is endless….

Every day I am to be found in the greenhouses behind a hose – possibly my least favourite job in the garden. Ah well, I can’t be doing the fun stuff all the time.

It’s a good time, though, to take time just standing and looking at my plants (after all, there’s not much else you can do). Stand staring for a while and you’ll spot that early outbreak of aphids, or the yellow mottling that signals the start of red spider mite. And the earlier you spot trouble, the sooner you can head it off.

In this greenhouse – the cucumber greenhouse this year, which means there are also cucamelons, peppers and an aubergine or two in here, plus an almost-finished pot of mixed salad which really needs to go outdoors – I’ve also been peering at the weed seedlings and noticicing that several are actually self-seeded French marigolds, left over from last year when I underplanted the tomatoes in here with them.

This is very gratifying, as it means a) my tardiness with the weeding has paid off and b) French marigolds can self seed – who knew?! Saves me a lot of time faffing about with seed trays and propagators – all I have to do is leave the heads on to set seed and I’m done.

IMG_4026 The cucumbers are in full production now: and that means I’m in the middle of my annual cucumber glut. I’m picking one or two a day at the moment, far more than we can possibly eat. The plan is to slice and pickle them instead of gherkins (which have – again – been an abject failure this year): must find a recipe.

IMG_4027
And in Greenhouse no. 2 the tomatoes are at last really getting going: I planted them out far too late this year after getting distracted just when I should have been clearing the shelving, late-sown seedlings and containers out, so they hung around in pots much longer than they should have. Just green fruits so far but all looking promising.

These are heritage varieties, and rather special ones at that: they’re from a little packet of treasure sent me by the chap who looks after the 103-variety-strong heritage tomato collection at Knightshayes in Devon. On the right are ‘White Beauty’, aka ‘Snowball’ – a hefty white beefsteak; on the left, ‘Sutton’s Everyday’ which sound nice and reliable; and at the end ‘Jersey Sunrise’ which I’m promised offers exceptional flavour. There are about a dozen other varieties in the package I’m intending to work my way through over the next few years.

IMG_4028
And I couldn’t possibly sign off without mentioning the newest arrival in this side. Over winter I lost my beloved rocoto chilli – it was coming into its fourth year, and last year was so vigorous and enormous it hit the ceiling of the greenhouse and I needed to construct a support frame for it out of 2×1 roofing battens to stop it muscling out the plants around it. Covered in lipstick-scarlet fruits, so many I gave them to family and friends and still had bags left over in the freezer, it was my pride and joy.

I hadn’t done anything particularly different from the previous three years, so I’m thinking that rocotos (also known as tree chillies) are actually just naturally short-lived and don’t last much longer than three or four years.

Anyway, there’s no problem that doesn’t also offer an opportunity: so I took the chance to ring the changes and try another chilli you’re supposed to be able to overwinter. Introducing my Aji chilli: aka Capsicum baccatum and another of the slightly hardier, earlier fruiting varieties. This one has yellow fruits, much more like cayenne types in that they’re thin-skinned, so I should be able to dry them (unlike rocotos which are too fleshy) and also not quite as hot as the tongue-blistering fruits on my lost plant.

As before, I’ve planted it in the greenhouse border; as before, I’m expecting it to reach a spectacular height and generally become a bit of a talking point. Watch this space!

Chilli fiesta

21 Saturday Nov 2015

Posted by sallynex in greenhouse

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

chillies, rocoto, tree chilli

greenhouse1

Ah. Yes. The tree chilli.

Also known as a rocoto, it’s one of the few varieties which you can overwinter fairly reliably in a frost-free greenhouse in the UK. This monster has just finished its third year: it is my pride and joy (I think I have mentioned it here and in magazines and basically anywhere I can get away with several times as I am so inordinately pleased with it).

Apart from a close encounter with a bevy of marauding aphids earlier this year it’s been quite easy to look after (once I got the message that it needs serious support: that lot is braced with two-by-one posts at each corner). It is absolutely enormous. And it’s laden down to the ground with dozens of lovely fat red chillies.

chillies1

Trouble is, we still have bags of chillies in the freezer from last year’s bumper harvest. I have palmed off as many as I can on friends, family and passing dog-walkers: but I now need to pick the rest. The overwintering routine for my pet chilli monster is to cut back the top growth by about a third, then bubblewrap the greenhouse (somehow working it behind that forest of branches) and switch on the heater to just above freezing.

Cutting off the top third of this lot is going to involve removing most of the chillies. So – anyone want some?

I have come up with a scheme so we’ll see if it works. What I suggest is that if you send me a fiver by Paypal (including postage & packaging), I’ll send anything up to 10 fresh chillies to you by post (if you don’t want all 10, please specify how many you would like).

chillies2

You can use them in your cooking, of course: they’re pretty hot at between 50,000 and 250,000 scoville heat units (around the habanero scale of pokiness), so you only need about a quarter of a chilli to turn the heat up quite considerably. You can’t dry them, as they’re too fleshy, but you can freeze them: I do mine individually in muffin trays, then decant them into a plastic bag till I need them.

Or of course you can extract the (jet-black) seeds and dry them for sowing next year, so you too can have one of these fabulous plants staging an invasion of the end of your greenhouse.

So – what do you think? First come, first served: post here with your name to bag your chillies (UK residents only I’m afraid), then once I’ve confirmed that you have the chillies send your payment via Paypal to sallywhite (at) hotmail (dot) com. Once I’ve run out of chillies, I’ll let you know in the comments below!

Life in the greenhouse: July

21 Tuesday Jul 2015

Posted by sallynex in greenhouse

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

chillies, life in the greenhouse, plant supports, rocoto chilli, tree chilli

greenhouse1

Help! We’ve had a bit of a disaster.

My tree chilli is my pride and joy. It’s now three years old and has settled in nicely, colonising the back left-hand corner of my no.1 greenhouse with such enthusiasm that nothing else gets a look-in.

But oh dear. I popped by this morning and look what’s happened to him. There are two sweet peppers under there somewhere, too. Somewhat squashed by now, no doubt.

greenhouse3

Tomatoes in greenhouse no.2 are more straightforwardly supported with canes – though even then they’re escaping off the tops. I am about to bolt a horizontal cane across the glass to take them all up to the roof.

I never had much luck with chillies before I found this one: they struggle to get enough light and heat in a single growing year here in the rainy old west, and since they die as soon as it gets cold the odds are stacked against you right from the start. Keeping them in the greenhouse seemed to help, but still the results were so-so.

Then I stumbled upon rocoto chillies, Capsicum pubescens – one of the few types which are more tolerant of cooler temperatures. Crucially that means that they have half a chance of surviving the winter, especially tucked inside a cool greenhouse: they can even – just – manage a couple of degrees of frost as long as they’re not damp at the roots. And two-year-old-plus plants are not only more productive, they’re also more resilient so can cope with more cold… and you have a virtuous circle.

greenhouse2

Jolly handy, these things – though be careful as if you tie too much weight to them the whole greenhouse buckles in a rather alarming sort of fashion.

My chilli is now so perennial it has a trunk. The fruits are fantastic, prolific and ripening to fiery red with the jet-black seeds typical of rocoto types: they’re blisteringly hot, about the same heat as a habanero, so you only need a quarter of a chilli to fire up a whole dish. They’re too fleshy to dry so I freeze them whole: I had so many last year I was supplying all my family and friends too.

I had been optimistically propping him up with a few canes and some string but they were as matchsticks when it came to holding back this behemoth. His relentless rise to the roof ridge – he hit it last year and I fear may push it off its moorings this year – has made him so top-heavy he’s collapsed sideways in an ungainly heap. And he’s not even laden with fruit yet: who knows how heavy he’ll get by then.

greenhouse4

Early results are looking promising…

I do have some rather handy bolts in the greenhouse frame which I shall have to press into service for this one, I think: I’m thinking three sturdy tree stakes driven into the ground, plus horizontal slats to make a kind of cage around that corner.

As always I wish I’d done it at the start of the season: staking late is never a good thing as you invariably end up trussing things up and that’s no good for air circulation or health in general. But I shall have to live with it for now as the status quo isn’t an option. I may need a bigger greenhouse…

Plant envy

02 Friday Apr 2010

Posted by sallynex in Uncategorized

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

chillies, Erythronium dens-canis, failure, heliotrope, morning glory, nicotiana, snowdrops, trilliums

I turned up at a client’s garden for the first time in a little while the other day to find this.

Isn’t it beautiful? It is, of course, the dog’s tooth violet, Erythronium dens-canis, and I am spitting mad.

The reason I’m so bloody furious is that I can’t grow the damn thing. Never have been able to. I must have wasted twenty quid over the years on buying its funny-looking bulbs and though I have planted them by the book – partial shade, moist but well-drained, lots of leafmould – they stubbornly refuse to do their stuff. Yet here they were: a little clump, nestling among the spring bulbs on the rockery. And she hadn’t even really done much other than plonk them in there. When told of my incredulity at the ease with which they sprang up she just said, “Really? I’ve never had any trouble.”

Why do gardeners always say that?

Dog’s tooth violets are not the only thing I can’t grow. There’s quite a long list, actually.

  • snowdrops (going to try the elwesii types at some point though -you never know)
  • chillies (this year’s failed to germinate, again)
  • trilliums (but I’m in good company)
  • heliotrope: how do you overwinter them?
  • Nicotiana sylvestris: germinate beautifully and then sulk, permanently
  • morning glory: ditto (going to try sowing in late May this year)

And if any of you lot say you’ve never had any trouble, I’ll torture you till you tell me which plants you can’t grow and then show you how brilliantly they’re doing in my garden. So there.

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