Chilli Growing Kit - user's guide.

2009 Growing Season. Our new Chilli Growing Kit has been selling very well on our online shop, so I thought I'd start a blog series on how to grow chillies with the kit.

Using the kit. The kit is shipped with seeds for three of our favourite chilli plants - and 60 seeds in all - check our web pages for more details on the varieties you have and what they can be used for. The best time to sow most chillies in the UK is in March and April - maybe late February if you have access to a heated greenhouse. Once you find time to make a start, follow the instruction with the kit to get the seedlings started. Using the Jiffy7 pellets supplied, the seedlings do not need pricking-out - once the seedlings are a few inches high, just pot them on. We recommend a 6" pot with a good soil-based compost - half-fill the pot, pop the seedling and Jiffy plug on the soil and fill-in around it.

Rehydrate the compost plugs. Unpack the propagator tray and place ten of the Jiffy7 pellets in the base. Be sure to place them the right way up - they have small dimple in the side that should be facing up.

Add 400ml of warm water and watch the magic happen! After about ten minutes, the Jiffy plugs will have absorbed all the water. What you have now is ten growing cells all ready to take the seeds. I recommend placing two seeds in each cell and then picking out the weaker if both germinate.

Place the seeds into the recess in the top of the Jiffy7 plug - just push them in to a depth of about 5mm. Once in, just push a little compost over to cover them. Remember to use the plant labels included to remind you later which variety you sowed. Place the lid on the propagator and place the whole thing somewhere warm - 25c is about perfect. On the farm, we use heating cables and warming mats to keep a steady warmth in the compost and this does speed-up germination time. You should expect to see germination start after about seven days, but don't worry if they take longer - just keep the compost warm and moist, and they will pop up. Be sure to take the lid off the propagator on hot days to prevent the seedlings over heating. If you have access to a greenhouse or conservatory, seedlings will grow better with the increased light.

You can buy more Jiffy7 plugs and propagators from our web page if you'd like to get more than 10 seedlings going at once.

After about two or three weeks, you should have healthy chilli seedlings that are ready for potting-on. I recommend a pot about 1lt (6" pot). The goal is to re-pot the Jiffy7 plug so that the new soil level is just above the top of the Jiffy7 plug. I like to leave 2cm watering space from the edge of the pot to the soil level - chillies prefer to be watered well and then left to dry. Now that you have potted-on the first bacth, the propagator is ready to be used again. I recommend a John Innes No. 2 compost for potting-on these plug-based seedlings.

After five to six weeks you will have a well establish chilli plant that is starting to develop flower buds. The kit also includes 100ml of 'Chilli Focus' plant food to help development and cropping.

Please let me know how you get on with the kit - hopefully we can help with any problems.

Selecting A Chilli For A Recipe

Get Advice. Chillies can be very variable in heat, so if the recipe you are cooking calls for a 'hot red chilli', how do you know that you are buying one? Well, if you're buying online, you should be able to get some help via email or a phone call, but it you are at a market/shop, getting advice may be harder.

Have A Taste. Provided you can access the chillies without committing yourself to an entire bag of them, take a chilli, place it in a bag of some sort, and break it open. Reach into the bag and wipe a finger on the area with the seeds; then lick your finger. You may need to wait a few seconds to decide, but it you don't get the heat or flavour you're looking for, try another type.

Selecting From Many. The 'lick-a-finger' test can also be handy if you have a selection of chillies to choose from at home, and want to taste a few to remind yourself of the flavour and heat to help you pick the right one for the dish. Take care to wash your hands before you inadvertently rub your eye.

Same Chilli, Variable Heat! If you are growing chillies, you may have noticed that chillies from the same bush can vary greatly in heat - and certainly chilli plants of the same variety grown in different environments (some in a greenhouse, some outside) will vary. If you want a milder chilli, pick them early in their development - before the seeds form.

Dried, Fresh or Prepared? How do you know when you've added enough chilli? Fresh and dried chilli can take a little while to cook-in to the recipe, so give it some time; a hot chilli sauce tends to be a quicker option. Many Mexican recipes call for a mixture of fresh and dried, and sometime include smoked or pickled chillies as well. Dried chillies have a very different flavour when compared to the fresh form, so you can add a greater depth of flavour if you add fresh and dried. Note that a dried chilli is something like one tenth of the weight of the fresh pod - you may find that useful when experimenting with measurements of fresh and dried.

Chipotle Sauce For Breakfast.

Fried Eggs And Chipotle Sauce. Here's a recipe I use when I feel like eggs for breakfast - which usually coincides with the weekend - this works just as well for me with poached and scrambled as well:

• Warm some olive oil (or chilli oil) in a frying pan
• Chuck a handful of seeds in - I tend to go for sunflower seeds
• On a low heat, toast the seeds for a bit
• Crack-in some eggs and fry the way you like them.
• Toast some bread, spread with a very thin layer of Marmite (or butter if you can't stand Marmite)
• Slap the eggs on the toast, add sea salt, fresh ground black pepper and two of three sloshes of Chipotle sauce.

Getting Ready for 2008

Growing Chillies From Seed. If you are thinking of having a go at growing chillies next year, here is a shopping list to get you off to a flying start.

Shopping List. A Heated propagator is a valuable tool for germinating chilli seeds - they like it hot! At the farm, we sow the seeds thickly in a soil-based seed compost and place the pots in heated propagators - we expect to see an erruption of shoots between 6 and 10 days later - some do take longer. A Jonh Innes soil-based seed compost is a good start for them. Plant labels, a water-proof marker pen and a few plant pots, and you're all set - apart from buying some seeds.

Recommend Chillies. Here is a list of easy-to-grow varieties that we have always found very willing. It tends to be a good idea to stick to well-known varieties - you will have a better chance of starting with good quality seed. My six of the best would be:

• Santa Fe Grande - covered in a recent log
• Cherry Bomb - ripens early and the fruits look amazing
• Hungarian Hot Wax - usually eaten green (or yellow in this case)
• Numex Twilight - a rainbow of colour and hundreds of 1"-long chillies.
• Ring-of-Fire - a very product cayenne type.
• Jalapeno - probably the most well know chilli - usually eaten green
  

What Else Do You Need? Chilli seedlings can get a little too leggy if grown-on after germination on a windowsill. A greenhouse is ideal, but you can also use a mini plastic greenhouse (less than £20) or a cold frame.

What Next? I'll add another log with some tips on sowing and growing-on, but for now, get that shopping list sorted!

Santa Fe Grande - a top-ten chilli!

My First Chilli Plant. This variety is the first chilli plants I grew at home, and it's a cracker! From seed, it is very eager and quickly develops a well proportioned bush - typically 50-60cm tall.

Melon-tasting Fruit. The fruit develops early, and is typically used in its 'green' colour (a creamy-yellow in this case). The fruits do ripen to an amazing sunset-orange in time, but I like to keep them busy by picking the fruit as it reaches full size - this will encourage more fruit to set. Fully-grown fruits are about 7-8cm and conical.

Good for Pickling & Salsa. The fruits flesh is very think, with a flavour that reminds me of melons. The chillies are medium-hot and are traditionally used for pickling or salsa. I have pickled these fruits sliced in half length-wise with good results. Another good use for these chillies is to cut a slit in them, stuff with cheese and bake or grill - yummy!

Developed by the University of California. The variety 'capsicum annuum var. annuum Santa Fe Grande' was developed by Paul Smith of the University of California in the early 1960's. Santa Fe Grande is thought to be synonymous with the Caloro and Caribe. Cascabella is a similar variety, but with smaller fruits. Fresno produces a very similar fruit, but the fruit is green turning bright red.

Drying Chillies - a rough guide.

What do I do with all these chillies? This is the time of year when you may be wondering what to do with bushes and bushes of chillies: eat them all, give them away/sell them, preserve them (vinegar and/or sugar), freeze or dry them. This entry is about drying them - dried chillies are really marvelous for all sorts of reasons.

Flavour and smell: A chilli can conjure flavours from thin air when they are dried. The most common flavour that develops from a 'large red' chilli is that of raisons - some say Christmas cake. Visit our farm some time and ask if you can stick your head in a tub of dried mixed red chillies! We often invite customers to have a sniff, and they are always amazed. We dry another chilli (Aji Limon) that has a very strong citrus flavour when fresh, but when you dry it, it looks, smells and tastes like little dried bananas (only hot)! To really appreciate the range of flavours from dried chillies and how they can be used, Mexican cuisine is the place to start.


Asthetics: If you dry chillies slowly, i.e. with a gentle heat, they will look really alluring: the dazzling orange of dried Habaneros, the ruby-red and 'leather' texture of Ring-of-Fire cayenne and the iridescent sparkle of dried Numex Twilight! We have a few photos in our library of dried chillies with back lighting - you can see the veins and seeds inside, and they look really special. Dried chillies can be used in all sorts of decorative ways - we have supplied dried chillies for wedding button-holes, for example. They look great at Christmas too.


Which chillies to dry? Some chilli varieties dry better than others. Of the chillies we dry, Ring of Fire (cayenne type), Aji Limon, Habanero and Piri Piri are the easiest. All of these types have reasonably thin walls to the fruit. Other types can be difficult to dry well (i.e. slowly): Jalapeno and Santa Fe Grande - both of these have thick flesh and are more commonly pickled or smoked and then dried.

Chilli drying techniques. You will need a warm, dry, well ventilated atmosphere for chillies to dry well. Too much heat will scorch the chillies and give them a bitter flavour. Not enough ventilation may result in the chillies rotting and leaving you with a gooey and very smelly mess. Too much humidity, and the chillies will dry very, very slowly. We find that a temperature about 40c-50c is about right. To generate enough ventilation, you may need to use a fan. The chillies should be treated to the best circulation of air you can manage, so spread them thinly (particularly larger ones) and check them regularly to make sure none have gone gooey.

Drying chillies in the home. When we were starting out with the chilli farm, we used all sorts of location around the house to dry chillies: over radiators, over a Rayburn, in the warming-oven of the Rayburn and on trays set over light bulbs. When we had a lot of chillies to dry at once, we added a desk fan to the setup to help with ventilation.

Storing dried chillies. Keep them in an air-tight container (or at least 'moisture-tight') and away from strong light. They will lose their sparkle eventually, but will retain their flavour and colour much better than ground chilli powder.

Peanut Butter & Chilli Jelly – PB&J

Peanut butter that doesn’t glue your mouth shut: Mix some jelly (I used our chilli jelly of course) with peanut butter – I went for about 3-parts peanut butter to 1-part chilli jelly - mix together well with a fork, and spread on some toast or in a sandwich.

The PB&J combination is big in the USA or course – on Wikipedia, a 2002 survey is mentioned which claims that the average American will have eaten 1,500 PB&J sandwiches before graduating from high school – see, I told you they were easier to eat.

There is a brand called ‘Smucker’s Goober’ (interesting name) that sells : PB&J in a jar. I think we’ll stay clear of adding that to our range for now (too many possible issues with using a nut ingredient).

PB&J should keep well mixed together, so I guess just find an empty jar and fill it with whatever mix of the two you like.