The Chili Project

8:46pm: Lots of October Chilis
This year's growing season seems to be coming to an end and the weather is getting a lot cooler. There's still plenty of chilis to be picked though. Some of these are not going to be ready before the weather gets too cold, so I guess I'm once more committed to bringing the plants indoors and transforming my spare room into a small jungle!

Here is a selection of pictures showing the various chilis on the plants, along with some tomato plants that I've grown this year too.

3:06pm: Summer Growth
SO, it has been the longest time of inactivity yet seen on the journal. Luckily, the chili growing has continued in my absence from this blog. It has just been rather difficult to find time to come up with anything original to write here, other than just the same old updates on how the plants are growing, how much fruit is produced, how many whitefly there are...etc.

So, in an attempt to get things going again, I made a quick video to show the progress so far.

1:05pm: Wow, less than a month since the last update!
For this update I thought I'd just quickly mention some of the fruit that has been harvested, and show some progress of the younger plants.

Although earlier on in the year it looked as though there would not be so much chili fruit, things moved on a long way over the past few months. The images below show some of the assorted chilis that I have picked over the last few weeks. In the first picture, on the chopping board we have (from left to right) some Purple Tiger, Pusa Jawala and Mustard Habanero peppers. In the bag at the top of the picture is a handful of Hot Lemon chilis. I have about three times this amount now, and more on the way!



Despite their name, the Hot Lemon peppers are actually not overly hot. But they do have a particularly pleasing flavour.

There's still some new growth on the plants, especially the younger ones. The surprising thing for me was that one of the Mustard Habanero plants has some new fruit forming. I did not expect this, as they have not been all that productive this year. But sure enough, while I was checking the health of the plants the other day there they were. These can be seen in the second photo below.



Finally for this chili update, another of my occasional 'wildlife' postings. Here is a small caterpillar that I found hanging out amongst the plants the other week. It must have hitched a ride indoors when I brought the plants in a few months back.



I have a small, low quality, video clip of the caterpillar here:

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A quick mention of some other plant related events. I received an Amaryllis bulb the other day, which I quickly planted. I have four amaryllis plants at present, although three of them are just coming to the end of their 'leafy' stage and will soon be trimmed and put into storage for a while.

Hopefully this recent one will develop into an impressive plant.

4:18pm: The Autumn 2008 Update!
Once again, months have slipped by without an update here. I think I may make this blog into a quarterly!

The 2008 Chili Project is in fact still going strong. Limited growth over the Summer - due to cool weather - has now been replaced by a plentiful crop of chilis. The outdoor plants are now indoors, as we had a surprise frost a few weeks ago. It must have been quite a sight, me stumbling around in the garden at midnight, carrying all my plants indoors :-)

The plants are a little large, and are occupying rather more space than I'd like. But, I believe it will be well worth it as some of them have a large amount of chili fruit hanging from them. You can see a selection of photos of the plants below. As usual, click for a larger picture.




The younger plants that were growing indoors over the Summer are also becoming fairly impressive, although obviously nowhere near as large as the outdoor plants. I have taken a selection photos that show their current condition, plus any fruit or flowers that they support.

First up, the Pusa Jawala. I actually harvested about thirty chilis off the outdoor plants last weekend, which I have not used yet. I gave about half of them to a friend, who assures me that they are ridiculously hot ;-)



Here's some pictures of the young Georgia Flame plant. This is supporting a rather alarming quantity of fat chilis. That's why the plant looks as though it is sagging rather - it is supporting quite a lot of weight!



Now we have the Purple Tiger. These plants have done really well both indoor and outdoors. The chilis are hot, so I've used them sparingly to spice up various meals. Very tasty.



Finally, the Mustard Habanero. I have three indoor plants. They're a lot thicker stemmed than the other plants, and as you will see in the photos, the leaves are very large in comparison to my other varieties. None of these have any fruit as yet, although there are many flowers. The outdoor ones have not produced very much fruit either - maybe only about five or six pieces. I think maybe our climate is just a little too cool for them. I'll see how the indoor ones fare. Maybe I have to find a nice warm spot for them.



The last picture is of my back room, where some of the plants are living. If anyone saw this, and did not know about my "chili passion", they would undoubtedly consider me to be crazy!

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Finally for this update, a quick thankyou to Marie Helene. I received the kind gift of some delicious chili products, all the way from Sri Lanka. I have not yet tried the spice mix, but I used some of the dried Butter Curd Chilis, and they have a very pleasant flavour. I can't wait to cook some more :-)

11:19am: A Rare Update
It looks as though it has been ages and ages since the last update (I almost forgot my login details!) Once again, other priorities took over and things got really busy for a while.

However, I'm pleased to say that the chili project has continued and seems to be doing relatively well. By that I mean that the plants are doing far better than last year's: the weather has been a lot better, therefore the plants are growing well.

I think they were also planted outdoors at about the right moment. There was a bit of an emergency - the plants were set outdoors in two batches, as some had grown faster than others. A few of the second batch were unfortunately attacked by aphids and subsequently died, but the rest of them went outside just in time. I think the local insect and spider population had a good feast! The plants are now doing really well.

A couple of the plants have already yielded a few chilis, and there are some more forming. Plus - as can be seen in the third picture below - there's plenty of flowers on some of the plants.

Here we have Purple Tiger, Georgia Flame and Pusa Jawala plants:



I also have some more indoor plants. I had a few seeds left over from the original planting session early in the year, so I decided to try to grow them later. My plan is to try the same approach as my first attempt at growing chilis. Back in 2005 I planted late, over-wintered the plants, then put them outside the following Summer. Those plants produced the highest yield of chilis that I've currently seen.

Here are the young plants - if this works out OK then I should have a couple of chilis in the Winter time!



Finally, whilst I'm on the subject of the original 2005 project - here is the lone survivor of my original attempt. This is a Bird Eye Chili plant that I keep indoors over the Winter. It's now in it's third year, although has not produced any chilis since it's first. It is flowering again now though, so I'm hoping it will produce some fruit. The rather ugly barrel in the background is for water storage - I wish I'd chosen a better angle for the photo!



Well, that's all for now. I'm not going to make any commitment to when my next post will be, as it may end up being months again!!!

11:32am: Repotting Day
Today should be repotting day if all goes well. I think the weather is good enough to move the chili plants outdoors, and most of them are certainly large and strong enough. There's plenty of flowers appearing to, and one of the plants (Pusa Jawala) has a rather large pepper growing on it!



There's one of the plants that seems to have gone crazy - it's huge...great big thick stem, and enormous leaves. I've got a couple of photos of it here. The leaves really are this big, it's not just exaggerated by the angle. The last photo is of all the plants sitting in their Winter/Spring home.



I'll post another update when the repotting is completed.

9:29pm: Spring Flowers
The first flower has opened on one of this year's plants - and what a large flower it is in comparison to the size of the plant itself.

I noticed the bud before, but I was surprised when it opened. Here's the images.





This is the only flower open though, so I guess it won't pollenate! Still, probably for the best at the moment. The plant is hardly large enough to have a chili growing on it I feel.

In a few weeks I expect the weather will be warm enough to put some of the plants outside. I might hang on for a bit though so they can grow larger. There seems to be no problem at all with whitefly or other parasites this year, so there is not so much urgency to get them out of the house.

6:42pm: Spring Growth
It seems like once again I've neglected to update the chili journal. Luckiliy in the meantime the chili plants have continued to grow. I have this evening potted them on to some larger containers. This will be their last re-pot before they move on to the large rectangular tubs when they move outside.

I've taken a couple of snapshots here - the first picture is shortly after the repotting session. There's only five plants that have been repotted today. The second image shows some of the other plants, which are also doing very well. These will probably be repotted next weekend.





The best news is - and I hope I'm not tempting fate here - there has been no sign whatsoever of whitefly so far this year. The plants are completely free of any sort of parasites as far as I can tell. Lets hope it stays that way.

I have something else to add to the journal today. I may not have posted in a while, but there has been something going on for the past two months or so. I think I mentioned in an earlier post that I had a webcam pointed at the chilis, taking timelapse photos of their progress. I have put this together and posted the first version on Youtube. This is two months of growth edited down to around ten seconds of film.

Here's the clip:

9:49am: Chiil Growth Begins Again
I had - as usual - intended on an update before now, but never mind. The 2008 Chili Project is now well underway. I took a couple of photos this morning to show the seedlings in their current state. Quite a few are growing now, and some of them have even been potted on already.

A little under half of the seeds have developed into seedlings so far, but more keep popping up. The rate of growth seems slow though - I'm not sure if this is due to the new methods I'm trying this year, or maybe whether my propagator is not warming up so well.

The quality of the pictures below is not great, as it was very early this morning and only just getting light. Still, they should illustrate the chili growth.



The bright yellow cards you can sometimes see in the background is my first line of defence against whitefly. Apparently they are attracted to this colour. It will be quite a surprise for any that land there - the cards are incredibly sticky and will trap them there.

The chilies I potted on are Pusa Jawala and Georgia Flame.

10:22am: First Signs Of Growth
Just over a week into the 2008 Chili Project, and the first signs of growth are evident. I usually start to look out for shoots appearing about a week or so after planting, and when I checked last night I was pleasantly surprised to see the first two seedlings beginning to grow.

I have a couple of images here. There's not much to see, and they're not great photos - but you can see the tiny seedlings beginning to emerge from the compost.



I'm hoping that when I inspect the tray later on there may be a few more growing.

7:15pm: It seems to have been a long, long time since there was a post here. Admittedly the Winter season is not the best time for chili activity, but I had intended to put something here.

Well, yesterday marked the beginning of the 2008 Chili Project, yay! There's not an awful lot to report really, although I am trying a couple of new approaches this year.

First up, a couple of snapshots of the preparation. The trusty old electric propagator is back in action. This may be one of the best purchases I've made in recent years. I was initially skeptical about spending £20 for a seed tray, but it has proven it's worth many times. I'm considering an additional one.

This time around I'm trying a grittier compost, as can be seen in the second image. I've read various points of view on this. Some people think this is better - it improves drainage, and gives space for the roots to develop. Others prefer a non gritty compost. I'm in my fourth year now of chili growing, but there's a lot still new to me, so I carry on experimenting. I shall try this out, and if it doesn't work, I'll try something new next time.

This time around I'm using a seed tray with small individual compartments. This is a departure from the last couple of years where they've been in the same tray, but it's not the first time. My first year - 2005 I think - involved individually planted seeds.



So the seed trays were filled nearly to the top with the compost. I've done something a little different here as well. From what I've been reading, I may have been planting too deeply in the past (although it never seems to have caused me any problems.)

This time, I have planted the seeds at a shallow depth. They have only a thin layer of compost on top of them. They're shown in the second photo, but you can't really tell because of the gritty compost ;-)



One drawback of the shallow planting - I didn't think to change the way I watered them. I unfortunately managed to expose some of the seeds so they were sitting on top of the compost again. Resetting them was not to much of a problem - a quick prod at the compost with a matchstick to make a hole, pop the seed back in and cover it.

Here's some pictures of the propagator in it's usual position in the house. This is where the chili plants - hopefully, providing they grow - will spend the next few months.



The rack they are standing on is the same one that last year's chilis where placed outside on. There are still a bunch of small garden spiders living on it since I brought it in a few months back. I'm hoping this small colony stays around, as they sure would help out with the usual whitefly problem!

So, I wait in anticipation of the first appearance of shoots. I'll update when they appear.

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Not all the chili seeds have been planted. I still have a few left, and intend to plant them at a later date. By experimenting like this, I intend to find the optimum planting time. If I set them too late, maybe they'll overwinter into 2009?

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The chili seeds are not alone on the plant rack - here are some of the money plants that I'm growing from cuttings.

I've mentioned them here before on the Chili Project I think. In the past few months each plant has doubled in size from the original cuttings.

I have too many of them I think! I must try to find suitable homes for them.

10:25am: Fruit, Lies and Flies
In a recent post I mentioned that I'd be setting some chili seeds at the weekend. However, this has not happened yet due to various other priorities taking over. However...maybe this weekend?!?

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I have had some more fruit reach maturity though, so as always, here's some photos. First, many of the Hot Lemon chilis turned at the same time. They're a superb bright yellow colour, as can be seen in these pictures.



I've not tried them yet, but hopefully over the next couple of days I'll have a chance.

I have lots of Purrira chilis on a couple of my plants. However, they've turned out be rather bizarre this time around, although rather attractive too. It must be something to do with the late development - not enough sunlight and very wet conditions - because they are multicoloured.

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Worryingly, some of the plants that I've brought inside are already host to whitefly. I think this is because the flies were brought in with the plants from outside. There's no predators now, so they're breeding.

This could introduce problems. I have to be absolutely sure that any new seedlings I produce are not infected, or I could end up with the near disaster of earlier this year. Admittedly, the new plants will be in a different area of the house. I guess I'll just have to keep my eye on the situation.

11:54am: Hot Lemons
Today there seems to be some reasonably good news. I was inspecting the Hot Lemon chili plants last night and discovered that the fruit is turning to a lovely bright yellow colour.

I was not really expecting this to happen - I thought they were going to stay green and not mature any more. However, they must be enjoying the warmth of the house. There's a few more chilis that are slowly turning colour too.

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I have begun preparing some space for the next Chili Project. The rack section of my cold-frame (see postings from earlier this year) has been brought indoors and placed right beside a window where the plants will get plenty of light as they grow.

I'm pondering the idea of setting up a "Chili Cam", as the plants will be right next to my small web server. It might be nice to have a time-lapse film of them growing, but I'm not sure how feasible this is at the moment.

I'm looking at probably this weekend to begin planting so I shall update here if it goes ahead.

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I can confirm that the Pusa Jawala chilis have been a great variety to grow. I used them in some cous cous stuffed peppers the other night (OK, Pusa Jawala are Indian, and the cous cous was Moroccan but it worked!) and they were very tasty, with a nice heat level.

I'm glad to say the plants are still producing them too :-)

2:38pm: Fruit - At Last
Time for a short update regarding chilis and a few other things.

Within a couple of days of moving the selected chili plants indoors, the Pusa Jawala fruit began to mature to a bright red colour. I picked all the red fruit from the plant in the hope that it will flower again, although I don't actually think it will.





The colour in the above picture is not so great as it was taken in rather dim lighting.

The other "refugee" plants seem to be doing OK - they're happer now they're indoors and warm I think. The fruit on the Hot Lemon plants does not seem to be maturing. I'm not sure how long they're meant to take, but they've been on the plant a while now.

The protected outdoor plants appear to be doing OK - although none of them have much in the way of fruit on them. The unprotected ones are starting to show signs of the cold getting to them.

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The "few other things" I have to report are to do with my Money Plant. I had to prune it about two years ago due to a stem growing out at an odd angle. I took cuttings from the removed stem and planted them. They're all now nearly the size of the original plant!

Anyhow, the original plant has again sprouted stems out in all directions, so I've pruned it again and planted some more cuttings.

On the left is the original, looking a little more comfortable with the heavy stems removed. The new cuttings are shown in their little pots on the right.





Looks like folks will be getting Money Plants for Christmas this year :-D

10:07am: Winter Is Coming
It has been a fairly eventful couple of days for the chili project. Night time temperatures have really dropped over the last week or so, and we had our first frost the other night. I was not expecting this, so had not taken any action to protect the plants. Luckily - as these two photos show - the plants do not appear to have been affected too badly.



A few weeks ago, I purchased some polythene sheet to try to build some protective frames for the plants. I figure I can probably get a few more weeks of growth out of the chilis before the weather gets too cold for even protected chilis. So yesterday I set about building frames. The result of some of this work can be seen below.



This will hopefully protect the plants at night, and should also create a greenhouse effect during the day to hopefully help the chilis to develop. By yesterday evening, there was plenty of condensation on the inside of the plastic, so it seems to be working.

Three of the containers of chilis have been moved into the house. I'm interested in seeing how this works out compared to the protected ones outdoors. They will of course be warmer, but have the disadvantage of not receiving so much light. We'll have to wait and see if the trade off causes any issues.




Incidentally, the final picture above is my veteran plant! It's the only surviving plant from the original 2005 project. It has not flowered this year, but remains very healthy looking. I'm hoping to get it through the winter successfully.

Not all of the plants are to be saved. The photo of the plants below might well be the last - they probably won't survive very much longer. However, these ones have not been too healthy looking for a while, so I'm not feeling too bad about sacrificing them!



I'm probably going to start up the next chili project over the coming few weeks. I think it may be a good idea to give them a head start to hopefully avoid the problems I've had this year. Photos and report will of course follow :-)

1:47pm: October Update
Once again it seems there has been no updates for a while. I can honestly say there has not been much worth posting. It is clear that the chili crop this year will be very disappointing when compared to last year.

As I've already discussed in previous posts, I believe this is down to the poor Summer. There's been some hotter weather over the last few months, but it came a little too late. Nonetheless, the plants have benefitted from this.

I have some pictures of plants that are managing to produce some fruit. There's not very much when you consider that last year I'd already picked hundreds of pieces!






There's a fair assortment there. The long, slender green chilis are Pusa Jawala. There are some small Purple Tiger chilis there too (they're the purple ones! :-) Also shown are a few Georgia Flame, the smaller, fatter ones (these have actually ripened now, and are amongst the first that I've picked.) Finally, the last picture is one of last year's survivors - a Purrira.

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I'm beginning to ponder my plan of action for next year. I don't want to end up in the same situation as this time around. I think I need to have the plants far more developed before I put them outside, which means an 'over-Winter' growing period. Or maybe a heated cold frame or small polytunnel. I think a combination of the two may be a good idea.

So, it will soon be planting time again. I have plenty of seeds left over of the same varieties as this year's crop. Soon I'll be back into the routine of watering and feeding the young plants. I hope this time around I can do a better job of keeping the whitefly at bay.

10:30pm: Fruity
I decided to post a very quick update. I got some snapshots this morning of some of the plants that are bearing chilis. These were repotted a couple of weeks ago into a large container.

The slender chilis are the Pusa Jawala variety, whilst the chubbier ones are Georgia Flame. I have no idea how large these will grow as the plants are still developing.

1:36pm: A Hefty Update - At Last!
Clearly it's high time for another update. Things are progressing with the 2006/2007 chili project.

The weather has been an issue. Temperatures were way down for the time of year for quite a few months, and this has of course had an impact on the growth of the chilis. Some of the plants are rather small, and I am unsure as to whether they will bear much fruit.

However, on the flip side of this, certain plants are growing like crazy. The combination of natural watering by the rain, followed by warm sunshine, has led various plants to grow quickly.

The following photographs are of this year's chili plants. Some are badly in need of repotting - this I hope to get around to this weekend, weather permitting. I have the pots and compost, I just need the weather to be good to me!

You'll be able to see from these photos the different range of sizes of the plants. Some are flowering, and a couple are already producing fruit!



Here's One of the plants that has a couple of pieces of chili fruit developing. This is a Georgia Flame chili. These peppers grow fairly large I think, but I'm not sure this one will yet - the plant is too small, surely?



The success of the 2006 chilis is mixed. Some of the ones that suffered badly from the whitefly early in the year are not doing well at all. They are very weak looking, and not growing much at all. This has affected the Aurora chilis mostly, unfortunately.

However, the Marble chilis are performing extremely well, with lots of small, colourful chilis forming. The Purrira are looking a little spindly, but are producing fruit.



Finally, here's some fruit from the Marble plants. My big problem is, I don't know how to use these! I may try to make some kind of sauce with them, although I am aware that they are rather hot.

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Time for another of my periodic non-chili related posts. The bad news is that my pumpkin plants have not made it. They didn't perform too well once outdoors, and I think I have to do some more research before I try them again.

There is good news as well though. I decided on a whim to try my hand at some herbs. I got a small kit from the local DIY store, containing seeds for parsley, coriander, basil and chives. Also included was a small growing tray and some compost.

It was clear once I opened the packaging that there was nowhere near enough room in the container for all the seeds - let alone enough compost. I planted some of the seeds in the supplied container and compost, and the rest in a larger tray with my favourite seed compost. This has provided an interesting comparison.

The compost supplied in the seed kit may not have been of a very high quality, as can be seen in the following photos. The first photo is the herbs growing inthe supplied compost:



There herbs are the ones in the standard seed compost. I think the difference is obvious.



I had some of the coriander on a curry the other night, and it was very tasty. I aim to use some of the basil with roast potatoes this weekend.

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If I manage to replant the chilis this weekend, I'll post another update here about the process.

That's all for now!

12:17pm: A small update
It's been so long since I posted here that I almost forgot my password!

Not much has been happeing on the chili project. All my chili plants have been outside for a good few months now. We have unfortunately had a bit of a cold spell, which has limited the growth of the new plants. Some of them seem to be growing OK, but others are at a standstill.

They are however getting plenty of water - rain is something we've had no shortage of lately!

I think it is almost time to pot-on some of the plants too. They're getting too large for the small pots they're in, which of course may also be limiting their growth.

Most of my mature plants were potted into large rectangular containers - four plants in each. The Marbles Chilis seem to have benifitted well from this, and are producing many small round fruits. Sadly, the Aurora Chilis haven't taken too well to the potting on, and most are looking in a really sorry state. Maybe if the weather improves and we get some sunshine, things will perk up.

I cannot rule out that the problems with plant growth, and the deterioration of the Auroras, is due to the whitefly infestation earlier in the year. That may have caused more damage than I initially thought. This is no longer a problem since the plants are outside, but something else has been at work - I found that some of the leaved have holes in them! Snails? Slugs? I'm not sure, but I'm determined to find out.

I shall attempt to get some photographs to post here over the next few days.

12:12pm: The Ants Fight Back
There has been some moving around of chili plants over the past week or so. The outdoor chilis seem to be doing so well that I decided it was time to get the remaining 2006 plants outdoors too.

The outdoor plants were given a close inspection the other day, and I was pleased to find that most of the whitefly infestation appears to have been cleared. I can only assume that the large number of ants and money spiders on the plants had something to do with this :-)

I still have a few more plants to transfer out to the garden as I ran out of compost! Here are some of my Aurora plants. These two pictures show the chilis exhibiting signs of damage from the whitefly. You can see that they don't look too healthy. I have removed all the damaged leaves and given them some plant food, and I think they look a little better for it.



The next three pictures show some of the chilis in their outdoor locations. The Marbles plants are producing loads of little round chilis - not bad considering how bad things looked with the infestation a few months back. These are in the cold frame at present, and will need potting on soon.

The final, very colourful little plant is one of the Aurora plants that I planted out last weekend. Unfortunately the picture also illustrates some of the insect problem - the little white flecks covering the leaves appear to be either dead insects, or possibly outer skin shed from their larvae.

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So, things are looking a lot better than they were - which just goes to show how resilient these little plants can be. The problem is not cured however. My young seedlings are suffering from pests now, and I think at least one of them will not make it. It's too soon to plant these outside as yet - I want to wait a couple of weeks, so I just have to try to control the situation for now.

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On a lighter note, I produced some chili sauce the other day. It's a habanero recipe that I got from the Internet, and it's not too bad. Admittedly, I have had a lot better sauces, but then it's the first attempt. I'll get some pictures and maybe the recipe details posted here soon.

11:45am: Abnormal Amaryllis
OK, I know this journal is called 'Chili Project', but I do occasionally feature other plants here - like the pumpkin plants over the last few months.

I have a couple of Amaryllis plants growing. One of them has developed a flower in rather an unusual position. As you can see from the following pictures, it has flowered almost directly from the bulb, instead of having the usual long slender stem.





Certainly looks a little odd, especially with the long leaves towering above the flower.

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A little chili news - the indoor plants continue to be ravaged by the whitefly infestation, although they do appear to be producing fruit OK. The outdoor plants seem to be a little better - hardly any evidence of pests, so I guess somthing must have come along and cleaned them up.

I think this weekend I may get more plants outside. I then just have to try to control the whitefly on the seedlings until they're planted outside.

9:35pm: 2007 Update
I just realised it's been a while since there were any photos of the 2007 crop. So here we go. It's obvious from these images that the plants are growing well. I'm hoping the pests don't cause too much a problem - they don't seem to be so far.



Lets keep those fingers crossed for a good crop!

12:38pm: Possible Pest Purge
I have inspected the plants that I moved out into the cold frame, and it would appear at first glance that the numbers of bugs and aphids have declined. I'm not sure if this is due to predators or the colder conditions. I cannot see any predatory insects so I'm assuming the latter.

The plants themselves do not appear to have been bothered by the drop in temperature during the nights. They still look a little sick unfortunately, but I'm hoping that the increased sunlight and some careful feeding will help them recover.

There was yet another small setback yesterday unfortunately. Before I left for work, I considered opening the cold frame. I decided against it as it was cloudy and rather chilly. Of course, it turned into the hottest day so far this year. I came home from work to find the plants wilting and in desperate need of water. I am worried that a couple of them may be too damaged to recover.

The indoor chili plants are doing OK, but still they suffer from the parasites. The seedling are growing quickly and I'm hoping they'll be ready to transfer to their final growing areas in a month or two.

There's also some news on the pumpkin plants that I wrote about a few months back. The surviving plants are spreading like wildfire and have to be moved outdoor this weekend. One of them even has a huge orange flower on it. Looks like I have a busy day of gardening at some point soon.

Anyway, that's all for now. Happy Easter!

3:29pm: The Migration
I have today moved some of my chili plants outside into the small cold-frame that appeared in an earlier post. I'm not sure if it's too soon - it is rather cold outside today.

There's about ten plants out in the cold frame. These are some of the ones that are worst affected by the whitefly problems. I have to admit I'm not overly hopeful of their survival - they're looking in a rather sorry state. Let's just hope there's some bugs out there that like eating whitefly larvae!

Here's a picture of them just after I put them in the cold frame. As you can see, it's a little cramped in there! I'd not realised how tall some of the plants are getting. Hopefully they're snug, but I suspect it will allow the whitefly larvae to jump from plant to plant even easier.



I have whitefly on some of my other plants too now - ones that were not affected before. They don't look to be suffering too badly as yet though. I've adopted a 'flick and squish' approach for some of these. Flick them off the plants, then squish them!

I'll post again in a few days once I know whether the outdoor plants are surviving Ok. If they do alright, then it may pave the way for more of the plants to be moved.

6:18pm: Parasites
Things are not looking so good for the Chili Project at present I'm afraid. Since I last posted here, there seems to have developed a serious problem with insect infestation.

There are whitefly, greenfly, blackfly in all stages of development, and they're threatening the development - and very existence - of many of my plants.

Worse still, they seem to be mostly immune to pesticide treatments.

The pictures below probably tells the story better than words. The first image shows one of my current worst affected plants. I say current, because I've already had one dead plant due to this. It looks like some sort of zombie chili plant! I've seen them looking like this through lack of water before, but this is because of the bugs.

The second two pictures show close ups, where you can actually see the flies and bugs hanging from the leaves.





Some of my plants are literally plastered with the things. I am very worried, as this years seedlings have also been attacked - so far I have managed to keep this under control.

I feel I need to get them outside and hope that there are some natural predators about to 'clean up' a little. However, it is still early in the year - I'm not sure what good this will do. They'll be under cover so the cold won't get to them, but will they be saved?

Grim times indeed. I shall post here again when I decide what to do.