Chilli Plants Progress

Variety	Appx Height	Flowers	Green Fruit	Ripe Fruit	Qty of Plants	Notes
Rocoto Yellow	2.5	N	N	N	1	Huge leaves
Rocoto Red	2.5	N	N	N	1	Tatty looking, poss coming back to life?
Peter Pepper	1.5	(Y)	N	N	1	Curled leaves
Thai Birds Eye	1-1.5	N	N	N	2
Bulgarian Carrot	1.5-2	Y	Y	N	4	First to bear fruit
Joe's Long	3	Y	Y	N	2
Cilieglia	1.5-4	Y	Y	N	3	Tall, lanky & still growing! Outside plants shorter
Jalapeno	1.5-3	Y	Y	N	4	Shorter plants outside
Habanero Orange	1	(Y)	N	N	2
Habanero White	1	(Y)	N	N	1	Short & bushy, wrinkled leaves
Habanero Peach	1	N	N	N	3
Serrano	1-3	Y	Y	N	2	1 plant short, 1 tall!
Hot Lemon	3	Y	N	N	1
Bolivian Rainbow	1.5	Y	N	N	5	Purple flowers, 1 plant wrinkled leaves
Starburst	1.5	Y	N	N	2	Bushy, small leaves
Nosegay	1	Y	Y	N	2
Santa Fe Grande	2-2.5	Y	Y	N	2
Thai Dragon	1.5-2	Y	N	N	2
Fatali	1.5	(Y)	N	N	1	Recent sudden growth spurt
Trinedad Seasoning	1	(Y)	N	N	1	Flower buds prone to dropping off
Krimson Lee	2.5	Y	N	N	1
Hungarian Hot Wax	1-2	Y	N	N	4	Outside plants shorter
Inferno	1.5-2	Y	N	N	2	Outside plants shorter, flowers only outside
Rubens	1.5	N	N	N	1	Curled leaves

Not Pests, Now Past

After asking around on an Internet forum, searching online and painstakingly picking off all the caterpillars we could find, it turns out they aren't caterpillars at all, but friendly aphid-eating hoverfly larvae! Exactly the kind of thing I'd been wanting in the greenhouse! No wonder the aphid population had almost disappeared, not as I naively thought they naturally die off a bit towards summer. Have since found 2 or 3 among the plants and have been extra nice to them in the hope they'll encourage friends to move in.

Chillies are doing ok. All except the Bird's Eye, Peach Habanera and Rocotos are either in flower, or have tiny fruit coming. The Bulgarian Carrots are most advanced, with 1 or 2 fully formed but green chillies.

Tomatoes also doing well with an abundance of green fruit that doesn't seem to want to ripen. According to the gardening expert on the local radio, this is happening to everyone as there's not been enough sun to ripen them.

Courgettes seem happy with plenty of new fruit on its way, same with cucumbers.

Fruit harvest

Harvested some of the allotment fruit today. Masses of blackcurrants (and still some left to ripen, so more to come)! No redcurrants, and very few whitecurrants (and those left were a little overripe) so we may have been too late. Same for the gooseberries - we might have left them too late, and they'd either dropped off or been eaten by birds - there were so few left on the bushes they weren't worth picking.

Also picked several baby courgettes (tricolour and parthenon in particular seem to be doing well) and our third bucketful of new potatoes - which have done exceptionally well, with large jacket potato-sized tubers! Ulster Sceptre have a good taste and texture when boiled, so may well use these again. Slug damage was present, but only in a few potatoes.

Transplanted the last few leftover plants (a few chillies, a cucumber, couple of courgettes) into spaces on the plot, and put in a few sweet pea plants.

Caterpillar Tracks

Still need to update this blog and fill in the gaps between the last post and this, which I'll do as soon as I have time. Meanwhile, the chillies have been growing well in the greenhouse despite a constant battle with green aphid things (been spraying them with water and a drop of washing up detergent which seems to kill off a lot of them). However, recently I keep spotting horrible little caterpillars on the leaves. Only in the greenhouse, they haven't affected anything outside. I often see them standing on their head (or tail?) pointing upwards like a column, or threshing around wildly.


Revolting things. Been trying to feed them to the birds (too squeamish to squish them with my fingers) or flick them over the hedge, but now looking for a way of getting rid of them, or at least keeping them under control.