All built, glazed and fixed to the ground and it only cost me a bottle of the Singleton to get it done.
Has anyone else ever had a chilli plant? I kept the one I bought last year even though it looked pretty dead all winter. It's flowering again so I've trimmed it back to the live bits, repotted it and it's the first occupant of the greenhouse. I also have a couple of dried chillis from that plant, stored for seed collection purposes.
Are they supposed to survive, or are they meant to be annuals?
Anyway, I'll shut up about greenhouses now, at least until something interesting grows in there.
12 comments:
The Singleton of Dufftown? Not bad at that price
You can have peppers as perennials, The Dutch do in large greenhouses with artificial light and fertiliser Its how we get Green Peppers and Red Peppers through the year They are all grown under glass over there and have optimal tonnage, but they use a shedload of natural gas and electricity to keep the greenhouses going.
Heat the greenhouse in the winter, and you can have chilis all the year round, add a decent light source aswell and you can have them when you want them at any time of year... Enjoy Its great fun having a proper glass greenhouse
wv Plebo Ay de mi
From my experience, you can keep chilli plants alive for a few years, but the effort involved is not worth the effort. Treat them as an annual and have done with it. For what it's worth, I would recommend the strain Ring Of Fire (who says gardeners don't have a sense of humour?) from Tuckers of Ashburton in Devon. Very productive, and very hot.
It'll probably grow back, but heavy frost damage sometimes prevents them fruiting properly again. I usually grow mine from seed as annuals.
Also, watch out for pests. Aphids and (particularly) slugs are very partial to them.
Slugs! The most evil creatures on the planet. Worse even than wasps. I gave up growing strawberries because of them. They don't just eat one, oh, no. They take a little bite out of every single one of them.
I have copper-coated weed liner on the floor of the greenhouse which claims to keep them away. If it doesn't work, I have chemical weapons in the form of slug pellets and will resort to beer traps if necessary. That's the only thing the supermarket own-brand beer is any use for.
If it comes to the crunch I am willing to sit up all night with a Gat and a supply of .177 lead slug pellets.
(I used to have a Gat as a child, so I just had to get another one. Funnily enough, I never shot anyone with it, despite the modern terror of the adults who never grew up).
Mr. Jolly - I have also planted some chilli seeds but the old plant was indoors all winter, so it's in good(ish) shape.
Too late for tomatoes and cucumber this year, but the greenhouse Smoky-Drinker has a good crop building up.
His greenhouse is double the size of mine, but I had to go with what I had room for.
Freewoman - that's the thing about smoky-drinky places. They're like pubs used to be. People can talk and make friends there with nobody vanishing outside and nobody going 'pooh' when they come back in.
So you can strike a deal with someone who knows how to put up a greenhouse but who can't afford a decent malt all that often.
I'm thinking of getting some pepper plants because I use a lot of them (part Italian, so I can cook). Stuffed peppers are almost as filling as stuffed hearts but I only get those for Valentine's day.
I doubt I'd heat the greenhouse to pepper-growing levels over an Aberdeen winter though. That would cost a lot more than just going down to Morrison's.
Chillies and peppers in my greenhouse all grown from seed but I'll try to keep them going as long as possible into the winter with no heating, then start fresh next year.
'Ring of fire' lol
"From my experience, you can keep chilli plants alive for a few years, but the effort involved is not worth the effort. "
Indeed. Like poinsettias, they are plentiful and cheap 'in season'.
It can be done, however. I currently have a three year old chilli (a nice yellow, not too hot variety) and last year's Christmas poinsettia, both going strong, yet I've made no effort beyond food and water.
Mayve there's something to global warming after all?
"I have copper-coated weed liner on the floor of the greenhouse which claims to keep them away."
Someone recommended double-sided sticky tape for pots to me.
It works a treat, but you have to keep renewing it as it gets wet.
Our resident hedgehog isn't pulling his weeight this year - the slugs got all our growing courgettes...
Eggshells are another way Im going to be collecting all of mine and sorting out the strawberry patch I lost about 100 g to the slugs this year.
I harvested about 500g which aint bad considering that I did fuck all in the way of maintenance this year,
I will be in touch hopefully this evening
I bought a packet of chilli seeds this spring that germinated really poorly - about half a doz. spindly creatures with no hope of a future. So, just to see what happens and doubtful of the result, I cracked open a couple of pods I had in the kitchen cupboard, from plants grown three years before. I think every one must have germinated and I've had to give quite a few away to save them from the compost heap.
WRT tobacco plants - they're a bit on the big side when fully grown. You definitely need a greenhouse to get them started in Feb, but they can stand quite low temperatures once established so I always set mine outside with the other veg once the frost risk is over, for harvesting around September. We're a bit further south than you (the Humber) but, if you can grow the ordinary, ornamental nicotianas there's no reason that the smoking variety won't grow.
Glad you got your greenhouse at last. I'm sure you'll get a lot of enjoyment out of it.
Chilis ? - "Scotch Bonnets" mate - lovely - just make sure that you use rubber gloves when chopping thenm ...
Not that they'll sting your fingers (unless you have a cut) - but for when you next need to take a piss ...
No matter how thoroughly you think you washed your hands, you'll regret it ! ...
I KNOW - and worse, while tears were running down my face, I rubbed one eye - FUCK, instantly blind - took a good 10 minutes before I reached even a semblance of normality ...
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