Chilli update

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My chillis got off to a very bad start this year, but they are catching up rapidly. Most of them now have some small fruit, or at least flowers.

The best of the bunch at present is “Cayenne”, which has several decent-sized fruit. They are all still green, but I feel sure this one will be the first to produce a ripe fruit.

This is “Aji Limon”, normally one of the latest varieties to ripen its fruit.

This is “Hungarian Hot Wax”.

“Cheiro Roxa” has suddenly produced loads of fruit. I really hope these ones will mature OK, because the photos I have seen of this variety make it look very attractive indeed.

This is “Brazilian Starfish”. Even at this early stage the ribbing on this little fruit gives some clues about what shape it will eventually be.

“Rocoto” is lagging behind most of the others, having just produced its first flower.

This is the “Bird’s Eye” – one of those I kept from last year. It has lots of very tiny flowers now, like this one (complete with aphid of course!).

This is “Indian Chilli Bullet”, which has an unusual way of delivering its fruit – in clusters at the tops of the stems.

This plant is probably the most prolific of this year’s batch. It is “Ring of Fire”. Despite being a fairly small plant (about 18 inches high), it has literally dozens of flowers on it now, some of which are just setting fruit.

As you can see, I need the next few weeks to be hot and sunny if the chilli harvest is to be any good. It doesn’t look hopeful just now (he says, looking out of the window at another grey overcast day)!

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P.S. You know that I’m always banging on about weedkiller contamination in commercial compost? Well, look at the leaves of my chilli plants, and tell me what has caused this distortion if it’s not weedkiller…

Fortunately the damage is not as severe as it was this time last year, but worrying nonetheless, especially in a food crop. Maybe you would like to see this article from the Soil Association about the presence of the weedkiller Roundup / Glyphosate in our bread and cereals?

http://www.soilassociation.org/notinourbread

The report claims that recent studies show that 7 / 10 city-dwellers in the UK had traces of Glyphosate in their urine! (I wonder if my guts are distorted like those leaves….)

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