Flowers

Flowers, oh so many flowers. One of the jalapeño plants that wasn't as far along as the others has gone into super speed mode, overtaken all of them, has 5 open flowers and is now growing the first chilli :) This has cheered me up and almost makes up for the massively stressful day yesterday. The wind was incredibly strong and it managed to move the whole greenhouse and knock most of the plants off of the shelves, spilling compost everywhere and damaging quite a few young plants. I'm a very calm person, but I got really annoyed by it. Every time I tidied it up a bit, the wind would come back and ruin everything again. The weather's been much...

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First flower & massive update

My first chilli flower has finally opened, and as you can see in the background, the others will be opening pretty soon :) Fun fact: my camera sucks at focusing on the right things when taking close-up pictures. When you add to that the fact that the humidity in the greenhouse kept fogging up the lens, I'm amazed I managed to get a picture at all. I think I'll make this update a picture-heavy update, instead of the wall of text that I usually post. 1 of the new strawberry plants that I bought from B&Q to increase my eventual harvest. I bought Elsanta, Pegasus and Cambridge Favourite. That means I now have a total of 5 strawberry plants,...

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It's getting hot in here

This is a happy post :) I finally have a greenhouse. It's nothing special, just a cheap thing from Argos, but it does the job brilliantly so far. I bought it just in time, the extension that powers the lights in the wardrobe had to be used for something else, so I needed to get my plants outside and the cold would have been too much for them. I also harvested my first crop. It was a single, small radish, but it feels good to finally eat something that I planted. My trays of 12 tomatoes and 12 black hungarian chillies are all up and doing great, and the tray of mixed chillies is just starting to come to life, so they're all under the lights...

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Growdrobe v1

It's been a while since my last update, so here's an awesome update to make up for it. The first version of the growdrobe is complete :) It will be upgraded eventually with more lights, possibly being split into more levels and getting some fans in there, but for now it's working nicely. It took a lot of fiddling around with cardboard boxes and planks of wood to get all of the plants up towards the top of the wardrobe so they'd be in the warmest area, but I think I've sorted it now. A couple of days after I'd spent ages putting new door hinges on and  getting them lined up perfectly, something's gone wrong so now the door on the right...

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Another update

I always try to make these posts really short, but it never works. I have a feeling this is going to be another long one. My chilli plants are starting to branch out a bit and form flowers, which makes me happy because soon I'll be able to play around with cross-pollination and things for next year's seeds, and of course, I'm one stop closer to harvesting some chillies :) A few days ago, I was feeling bad about how much chocolate I'd eaten, so I bought a tray of melon chunks and grapes to make me feel healthier. I found a few melon seeds in it and thought I'd try planting them. I didn't really expect anything to grow, shop-bought fruit usually...

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Quick peek into my box

I'm still waiting for a few things to be delivered, so I can't get back to working on the growdrobe or any of my outdoor planting plans yet :( So this is just a quick post to show what's going on in my mini box right now. I did have peas and things in there, but they've all been moved outside, so now it's full of chillies and 1 cucumber plant (the plant closest to the camera). I'm really happy with that box actually, the plants seem to like it and it's really good for germinating seeds (look at the back of the picture, there's some new chillies just coming up). Hopefully I can get my growdrobe sorted soon. I need to move these chillies...

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Another quick update

I'm really bad at updating this blog properly. I'm supposed to be keeping track of every detail of my plant's growth, but I always forget. I've just separated and repotted all of the bigger chilli plants, so now I don't have to kill off the weaker ones, yay :) I've also repotted some of the peas, cucumbers and radishes that were in fibre pots, because their roots had started to poke holes in the pots. Lastly, the yellow bucket with radishes, carrots and parsnips is showing signs of life. Lots of radishes have sprouted, hopefully the carrots and parsnips will be up soon. Boom, updat...

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What a difference a week makes

It's been a while since I last posted pictures of my chilli plants, and this whole blog is supposed to be about keeping track of my plants' progress, so I think it's time for an update. That picture on the left shows two jalapeño plants at about 10-15 days old. As you can see, one of them is extremely crooked. I thought it was about time to kill off the weaker plants from the pots with multiple seedlings in, but I wanted to do an experiment first. I read that you can pinch plant stems so they break slightly, and the broken section will heal and be even stronger and better than before. The experiment seems to have worked, that particular plant...

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Let's take this outside

All of my plants so far have been sown and grown inside, so I decided to plant a few things outside. I planted carrots (chantenay red cored 2), parsnips (hollow crown) and radishes (sparkler 3). I started with a yellow plasterers bucket that I found in my garden and washed with some watered down bleach to kill any nasty germs that may have been living in it. Then I filled it up with various compost mixes that I had in my garage. The bottom section was mainly the Wilko multi-purpose compost, because that's lumpier and I thought it might be better for drainage to have it lumpy at the bottom. The middle layer was mainly the John Innes seed...

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Growbox Construction

Would anyone be interested in seeing pictures of me converting the wardrobe into a grow box? I've already started on the first step (painting the insides white), and I'll just be filling it with lights that I already own and a few other little things that I already own + stuff I'll be buying over the next few days, but I think it might be a nice, basic guide for people growing on a tight budget like ...

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Quick Update

I thought I'd post a quick update as it's been a few days since my last post. I made a new cardboard grow box, the other one just couldn't fit enough pots in, and the new one has 2 bulbs in it, which has obviously had a massive effect on the plants. It was sort of a waste of time building the new one though, as I've just managed to get my hands on a wardrobe that one of my relatives was going to throw out, so I'm in the middle of painting the inside white (it's apparently a better reflector than foil, I'll be upgrading to mylar when I can afford it), installing some fans and finding a good way to fit the lights. All 8 of the jalapeño seeds I originally planted have germinated, and now I've planted 2 more jalapeño seeds, 2 hungarian hot wax and 2 ring o fire. My habaneros are just barely...

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Progress

My jalapeño seeds have germinated, yay! The packet that they came in said they could take up to 5 weeks to germinate, but mine only took 8 days. I think that was probably due to the warmth from the light and the heat mat. Only 1 of them had popped up at first, then I checked on them a few minutes later and I had 6. Hopefully the others will catch up soon. The box has changed quite a bit since my last post. It's almost completely covered in foil, I have a better light bulb, I've lowered the floor to stop the stretched radishes touching the bulb, and I have a few more seeds in there. I'm still looking for something more permanent to put them...

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Mini Growbox Test

I needed somewhere warm and bright to get my chillies started off and to keep them healthy until they're ready to go outside, so I built this box out of scraps I found around the house. There are 2 jalapeño seeds in each of those 4 'empty' pots. I'll let them all grow a bit, then kill off the weaker ones. I read that that's a good way to make sure you only end up with strong, healthy plants, so I thought I'd see how well it works. That tall, thin plant is a radish that I put in there as a sort of test subject. I have radishes in other places too (the garden, the kitchen windowsill, an artificially lit propagator etc.), and I compare them...

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And so it begins

I decided to buy a few seeds and other things from a local shop while I waited for my chilli seeds to be delivered. I bought some cucumber, dwarf tomato and radish seeds, a cheap little propagator, some cheap compost and some miracle-gro compost (to mix with the cheap stuff to give it a little boost). The propagator has 24 cells, so I decided to use half of it for those seeds and save the other half for my first batch of chillies. I made an oopsie though. After I filled up the 12 cells, I went to put the propagator on my bed while I sorted out a warm place to keep it, and I dropped it, covering my bed in compost and mixing up all of the seeds :( I picked out all of the seeds that I could find, replanted them and whatnot, but I must have missed a few as some of the cells now have multiple...

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Buying my first seeds

I'll be buying my seeds from Amazon, as they're a trusted website with a great review system to let me know which seeds are worth buying. This is the first set of seeds I'm going to buy: This seed set includes 15 Jalapeño seeds, 15 Hungarian Hot Wax seeds, 15 Habanero seeds and 15 Ring O Fire. This is a great set to start off with as it has the Jalapeño peppers that I love, with some interesting new peppers for me to try. It's also apparently fairly easy to grow in the UK under the right conditions. I'm also considering buying Bhut Jolokia seeds, just to see if me and my family and friends can handle the chilli that once held the title...

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