It’s fair to say that, that last year this site didn’t get updated that often. I guess I started to realise that there was only so many time I could find interesting ways to cover off things I’d already talked about in the previous years.
That and the RIDICULOUS heat we had. In my real life I sit in front of a computer all day long, the last thing I wanted to do in that heat was to come and do it all again.
But, now it’s 2019 and we’re back with our little pots of mud doing it all again, and I’m no exception.
First things first, this year I won’t be growing a lot of plants. We adopted a Greyhound, Bobby, last year and, well. Let me just say that he isn’t respectful to plants :-/
It isn’t his fault, he’s a retired racer – Racing Greyhounds don’t live in houses until they are adopted and it’s all new to them. We basically got a 5 year old Puppy. A big, huge, stonking puppy and everything is new to them, everything.
It’s a good job he’s a looker 😉
It’s not all Bobbys fault, I’ve a small mountain of Chillies that I grew last year still waiting to be used up. I never actually thought I’d say this, BUT, I don’t need to grow Chillies this year.
That doesn’t mean to say that I don’t want to do, of course I do.
So, this year I’m going for just 8 favourites to grow in my Gardening Sensations Quadgrows. Which is a massive drop down from the 100+ I normally end up with.
Well, I say that it’s just going to be 8, but I’d be very surprised if that ended up being the case.
The first problem being I’ve to pick just 8 varieties from this little lot;
I’m not sure how many varieties there are in there, last check it was close to 150 and I’ve added to it here and there since then.
The first couple where no brainers. Jalapeno for example, who doesn’t love those things? Same for AJi Limon and Dorset Naga. Scotch Bonnets are without doubt a keeper as well, so much so I went with MOA Scotch Bonnets AND “Stupid Big” Scotch Bonnets.
The final three weren’t so easy to narrow down, but in the end I went with my gut and choose Komodo Dragon, Padron and Gibbering Smoke because, well, I like them.
The potting mix I’ve gone with this year is my favoured Westland Growbags, I’ve thrown in some Perlite and I’ve topped with Vermiculite.
The game, as they say, is on 😀
Hi Paul,
Same for me this year; as in limiting the number of plants I’m germinating!
I didn’t have anywhere near the crop you did from last year. I put that down to a number of reasons, not least of all the crazy weather…snow in Feb, March/Apr (which killed my fledgling chilli plants 🙁 followed by the stupid temperatures in the summer months, meant the plants were too young to handle the long periods of dryness. After the mishaps earlier in the year, they didn’t properly get established until May, so as a result things didn’t go so great!
A few of the varieties grew to full adult plants, but bore NO FRUIT, despite feeding them (as I have in previous years) with Chilli Focus, and some varieties did amazingly well (for example “Kitchen Pepper” which was a freebee from UK Chilli Seeds Co!). I am in the process of writing up which varieties were good/not-so-good/awful, I’ll sent it over your way when it’s done for the “benefit of the community” 🙂
Personally I have gone for: Thai Dragon, Trusty Orange Habs, Craigs “Double Hot”, Butch T Reaper, Maruga Scorpion, Carolina Reaper, Ring of fire, Clockwork Orange, Naga.
So far the Naga’s are the only seeds that haven’t seen the light of day, hopefully another few days..?
Good luck with yours mate…JG 🙂
The weather was a bit crazy last year – A lot of my plants didn’t do well at all, but the ones that did – Did REALLY well.
My Dorset Naga have been the only no show for me so far, I’ve actually just put some more seeds in dirt today to try again with those and also a couple of other varieties I’ve been kicking myself for not choosing.
Be interesting to see that list when you get it sorted – Bit miffed at myself for not doing a better job of blogging my grow last year so I can look back and see what worked and what didn’t.
Never mind, hoping to get it all back on track now 🙂
And, same to you fella – Good luck with your grow 😀