Two weeks to go.

No its not Christmas, the date I have in mind is December 14th, the day I try to sow my hot cap chinense chilli peppers. Why? you ask, well, a week later and its the winter solstice, and the days start to get a little bit longer. To me, and a few other friends, some sort of hippy orientated, some horticulturists, feel that its one of the most significant dates in the calender. Anyway, I have always held the belief that plants have some sort of rudimentary intelligence, apart from 'Tropisms, please excuse me if I misspell that word. but they are clearly aware of changing seasons. Anyway, back to the point, having been sown on the 14th, they should be starting to poke their little heads out of the compost by the 21st. So I aim for that date. Not all will be up within a week, they are one of the slower types of chilli pepper to come out of their seeds.

In order to give them their the best start in life and to protect them against the cold of January and February, I use a wonderful propagator made by Greenhouse Sensation, (strange I thought I was one of those). Greenhouse sensation are based Ooop North, so understand getting things going in the cold.

Now these very early sowings are for our use at the nursery, mainly varieties I want to produce seed from, but not all, some will be used to create sauces, oils and some other tasty goodies, but more of them in later blogs.

Back to the baby chilli peppers, its only members of the cap chinense which I start of this early, members of the other families are quicker out of the blocks. For example, a cap annuum may be 18 inches tall in early April, whilst a cap chinense will be about 3inches. They also tend to fruit a bit later, so giving them an early start means a larger plant, and more fruit.

I feel that as this is my first blog, its not going to purely about chillies, as or motto is, 'Putting Flavour First', its going to be about all things relating to the nursery and the seed business. However things are, (please excuse me), hotting up in the chilli world, with the possibility of a trans Atlantic ruckus starting, so watch this space.