Pimientos de Padrón

Thought I'd put up a video showing how to make the Spanish Tapas as many of you know I have some of these plants growing. It's probably not too late in the season to get you'r own Padrons growing especially if your going to grow them on a sunny windowsill.

Ingridients:

some Padron peppers

couple of pinches of course sea salt

Some olive oil for frying.

Cold Spanish larger.

Instructions:

Heat up oil to a high temperature.

drop in the Padron peppers and fry until skin goes white and blistered.

Remove peppers from oil sprinkle with salt.

eat with cold Spanish lager.

Watch out for the hot ones, they say one in ten is a hot one, we had some really hot ones last year!

Enjoy.

Chilli growth update

Rooster spurs

Trinity, Apricots & Dorset Nagas

Padrons, Jalpenos & Aji limo


Chilli growth update.

The padrons and jalpenos are coming on well and are the biggest growers still. The Rooster spurs are still small as are the Trinity, Apricots and Dorset Nagas, that said they are all doing well in their own way, rooster spurs are very small bushy plants anyway (well the ones I've grown have been) and the Trinity, Apricots and Nagas are all quite bushy as opposed to tall plants anyway.
Unfortunatly the Orange habneros are looking like they are struggling to get enough light and heat at the moment and are hardly growing at all. I've never grown these before and I'm thinking they really need a indoor grow light to get them off to a good start, but I will keep on with them and see how they turn out.

Agricultural Simulator 2011 Extended Edition - ingame trailer

Well I checked the bank balance & there is no way I can afford a farm, not even my dream small holding, I can't even afford a small house with a garden, a couple of chickens,a greenhouse and a vegetable plot....oh wait a minute what's this? Agricultural simulator where I can manage my farm, growing crops and tending to my animals in a beautiful mountain village. Well that really does sound good. I'm in.

Got a strange feeling that this might not be quite as good as I'm hoping/expecting it to be.

Potting on, new pots

Dorset Nagas

                                                                  Trinity & Apricots

                                                             Padrons, Jalpenos & Aji Limo

                                        
                                                        
The Chilli plants have all been growing well (despite the grey British weather) so I was going to do an update on them today, but this afternoon my potting on pots & trays came in the post so I decided to take some photos of the chilli plants that were big enough to pot on after transplanting them this evening.

The pots are 8mm wide and should be ok size wise for the slow growers untill planting outside, not too shure about the Padrons & the Jalpenos tho' as they are starting to grow nice and quickly now. I shall wait and see.

I was expecting the pots to be really cheap and flimsy but they arn't bad considering I got 108 pots & six pot trays all for under £20. Once all the pots are full & watered the weight is too much for the trays really but as long as you support them while carrying them they are fine, also chillis don't like their roots in water so its good to keep them fairly dry.

More Chilli Seedlings

Yesterday I decided that I didn't have enough "Rooster spur" or "Aji Limo" chillies growing so decided to plant some more seeds of those 2 varieties.
9x Rooster Spur
5x Aji Limo

I don't know why I'm planting more seeds as those of you that have been following my blog will know, last week I found a crumpled mess of metal & plastic up the allotment where my old polytunnel used to be as in the storms the week before the wind must have ripped the plasic covering and just took it apart (once the wind gets it its like a big sail), so as of that moment I have nowhere to grow any of my super hots :(
I'm currently looking into costs of building my own polytunnel, but there doesn't seem to be any cheap options at the moment. DIY tunnels seem to use water pipe for the hoops & steel rebar for ground anchors both of which are really expensive as is the poly cover. I have a couple of months to try & get some funds & work out the cheapest options. Of course I will be keeping you all posted on events as they occur.
I also bought some new growing on pots from Dobies that will hopefully be big enough for the chillies until they are ready to be planted out. I got 108 pots with carrie trays for around £20 reviews will follow.

All my Chilli seeds this year are purchased mail order from sea spring seeds here in Dorset. Sea spring seeds developed the super hot chilli "Dorset Naga". If you are thinking of growing your own chillies from seed then I'd highly recommend getting your seeds from sea spring seeds. They have a great variety of chillies from mild to hot to the super hots, they also have some pretty looking chillies (ornamentals) that will brighten up a widow sill, consevertory, greenhouse or patio.

One Pot Pledge®

Thought I'd post this up for all of the people who follow my blog & have never grown any fruit, veg or even flowers or bulbs.
You might think that you don't have any space to grow any fruit or veg, but all you really need is a warm window sill somewhere in your house.
 I'd (Obviously) recommend growing some chilli plants, if you are stuck for room maybe something like the "Rooster spur" that I'm hopefully going to grow this year or a "Numex twilight", both are small bushy plants that produce alot of small, hot "birds eye" type chillis. The "Numex twilight" has the added bonus of looking pretty too with its purple, orange, red & yellow fruits.
 If your not into chillies then maybe some fresh herbs for cooking or even some salad leaves.

Join the one pot pledge here: One Pot Pledge®

                                                                            Twilight

Rooster spur

Not much to see here

At this time of year for the gardener its pretty weather dependent on what can be done in the garden, the main jobs are preparation jobs like cleaning out pots, Improving your soil by digging in manures & composts, deciding on what to grow for the following season, ordering your seeds & maybe sowing some seeds indoors to get a bit of a head start on the season.
The allotment here is on heavy clay soil and the weather has been really wet for the last month or so after all the frost, which is pretty typical of this time of year. With wet weather and clay soil there isn't really much to do up on the allotment right now.
Those that have been following this blog know that my chilli seedling I planted in January are coming on slowly (more photos in the next few days), but February is still a good month to sow seeds & get a head start if your thinking of planting some chilli seeds. Its also a good time to start off Tomatoes & peppers. Which is exactly what I've done today 12 Faworyt tomatoe seeds have gone into my propergator.
Not much to see at the moment but hopefully within the next few weeks we'll have some tomatoe seedling that will give us an early crop of Tomatoes.

Chilli powder

This is a great way to store any surplus of chillies. Last Years Dried Chillies (Birds eyes, Jalpeno & Dorset Nagas) Were hung up in our window to dry out & then when totally dry put into a coffee grinder/food processor & blended into a fine powder. Super hot home made home grown chilli powder. store in an air tight container.

Cam McCaul The Collective.f4v

What can AdSense do for you?

Some Sunday morning dubs, Enjoy

Kanka - Skunky

Dubphonic - Galactic Sushi Man

Sam Hill - World Championship Val Di Sole (Freecaster)

Got out on the bike this morning with the dog, sun was shining as you can see in the pictures above, but was really wet and muddy, great fun. Rode just over 8 miles but was real hard work due to all the mud from the rain we have had recently.
Managed to beat a few of my personal best today, but to be quite honest I've only just started so I'm kind of just setting them up. I've been using a GPS android app called Sportstracklive on my phone that does a great job of tracking your average speeds best times, miles & a whole lot more, It even shows you a replay of the route you done in real time over google maps or you can speed it up.
I'm hoping to really improve my fitness this year as I'm not very fit & I'm finding that I haven't got the strength in my legs to keep pedelling for very long to get that extra speed up when going down hill or hitting any sweet jumps
.

Made a trip up to the allotment this afternoon with some bits for the compost heap to find my poly tunnel flattened by last weeks gale force winds, absolutely gutted. I now have nearly a hundred orphaned chilli seedlings. Looks like I will be building a D.I.Y style poly tunnel this year, could be a big one if funds allow.