Chillies!

So, these "Jiffy plugs" were given to us as a Christmas present to plant chilli seeds in. They're all from the South Devon Chilli Farm, and were given to us by Hagos's brother's family. They usually send us chilli chocolate every year too, and I have to say, they make some of the best chocolate I've ever tasted (and there were a few years when I tasted chocolate daily from all over Europe).  

This is them in their little propagator. It's very cute. I have it in Hagos's studio at the moment as it's warm and sunny (but not direct sunlight) in there.

And these are the types I've planted. The Cherry Bomb looks particularly exciting.

I haven't had much success with chilli plants. A couple of years ago the aforementioned brother-in-law gave us 20 packs of chilli seeds - far more than we could ever hope to grow, and I wasn't even a gardener then - and our gardening expert friends Janie and Ba adopted them all and their whole house was covered in chilli plants in little pots. They gave us one back to bring home, we put it in the bathroom (it was only about 8 inches high) and it grew into a GIANT BEANSTALK!! It took over the whole bathroom, grew up and along the beams, and it didn't give us a SINGLE chilli. I had to throw it out in the end because I noticed it was attracting little flies to it, and then when I looked at it very closely I noticed lots of little white things crawling all over it! Yuck! Immediately it was chopped down and put in the outside bin.

So, I'm hoping for more luck/success with these. Janie and Ba gave us another (normal-sized) chilli plant last year, which we grew outside and that produced THREE chillies, which I used in cooking and they were delicious.

These are my gardening bibles. I consult each one intensely about everything I'm planning to do, and then I email Ba to double-check everything with her. She's given me SO MUCH advice and help. I'll have to make her some extra-special tomato relish this year as a thank you.

Gardening is just great! During my daily morning tub-check I noticed that my garlic is already growing!!!