How are the veggies coming along?

[peds]

Absolutely not! They aren't native plants, and as such will strangle the red squirrels.  I'll stick to chewing on hawthorne leaves and scraping the soil off of wild parsnips, thank you very much.

 

But no, those look very interesting.  Thanks for the recommendation, I'll look into them!

[sime42]

Not too bad a Chilli harvest so far this year. Plenty more on the plants but they'll have a race to ripen before it gets too cold now.

 

 

 

[peds]

You lucky thing. Any exciting varieties? 

 

You can "scare" the last fruits into ripening, works with tomatoes, chillies, aubergines, anything like that. Go to rip the plant up by the roots, but stop short of doing any actual damage. The plant will panic and put on a sprint finish for its last chance to propagate.

 

Might weaken any chilli plants you want to overwinter though, best done to annuals only. 

[sime42]

Nice tip. I've never had much success with overwintering chillies so not too worried if I go in too heavy handed. Are there any advantages to overwintering them? I always just save a few back for seed and then go again every year.

 

The cute round one is one that I picked up in Romania about 15 years ago, the long one hails from Turkey. Both hot enough to make their presence very much known with just a couple in a dish, but not so ridiculous that you have to be careful with them, if you get my drift. They're kind of getting towards a personal Landrace Strain status I guess.

[peds]

Smashing, nameless heirloom mystery chillies. There should be more of them.

 

You can get a bigger plant earlier on when overwintered, though seedlings often catch up with their youthful vigour anyway. Also, overwintered plants probably make good clone mothers, or would themselves accept a graft quite readily, to minimise the risk of genetics straying from the seed. 

It's how many growers of the Devil's lettuce preserve their strains, anyway.