The Paraplegic Farmer

Well this doesn't happen very often! Preparing for next year, getting organised. It's unheard of in this house. So yesterday afternoon I had a cheeky look on premier seeds website.   http://www.premierseedsdirect.com/   And whilst ordering five litres of Chilli Focus fertiliser I got some of next years seeds in. We are going to mainly focus on chilli plants for next year, giving the  sweet peppers a miss and cutting back a little on the Tomatoes. So for starters we are going to be planting......... Maule Hot, these go up to about 30,000 on the Scoville scale.  So not too hot. Satans Kiss, a small chilli pepper from Italy. The Italians stuff them with Anchovies and Mozzarella, they get to around 50,000 Scoville units. Birds Eye Demon. We have grown these this year and starred in one of our chilli challenge videos........ https://youtu.be/rDdQ8tdd240   They were mighty hot when just eaten raw and have proved to be very useful in ...

It's a bit fresh outside today, is it a sign that Autumn is on its way? The forecast for the next ten days doesn't show much above 20°c with some rain thrown in for good measure. Hopefully we will still get some warmer weather, we have only just got into September after all. But the Tomatoes in the grow bags have finished, Tina has stripped the plants of fruit this morning and has since removed the plants. They never really did do that well, just planted straight in the grow bag! They did produce tasty Tomatoes, but not that many.  I think we found what the problem was, and that was that there was not enough room in the grow bag for the roots. So we invested in some of these........... Plant Halos, Growbag Halos whatever you want to call them. You cut a hole in your grow bag to fit them in, they have about six spikes that go down into the compost and that's where the water goes. You plant in the neck of the Halo and the roots can then go down into...

Not as hot as part 2 was but it was quite nice.

I've been pondering over something for the last few days!  What is it? And where did it come from? So I have been searching the internet and browsing through old orders I had placed with Premier Seeds Direct. http://www.premierseedsdirect.com/   And I can't find anything that looks similar to this plant, the fruit is quite distinctive and like nothing we have growing at the moment. Then I remembered this............ Three types of seeds came with this kit, Jalepeno's, Cayenne's and some that were called "Hot Scotch". I've just read the instruction book and it called them "Scotch Bonnets". So there you go, problem solved. I've had this kit since Christmas 2015, but as I spent most of 2016 in hospital they never got planted. And then this year we had a greenhouse catastrophe! The pop up greenhouse we started with took flight across the garden and all the seeds got mixed up.  There are quite a few recipes ...

We are running out of ideas of what to do with all the tomatoes we are getting. Tina has been dehydrating them then vacuum sealing them for the freezer, she has also pulped some up for sauce bases and some have made it into a sauce which is getting bottled up as we speak. So another idea we have seen doing the rounds on the internet is smoking!        But we don't have a smoker! No problem, we have a gas BBQ and this little trick should turn your BBQ (if it has a lid) into a smoker.  First off your going to need some wood chip, so I spent an hour in the garage chopping up some old Oak we had. Once that was done I soaked the wood chip in some water for about an hour and a half.  Then your going to need some aluminum foil. Double the bottom part and leave enough to fold over for the top. Place the wood chip on the bottom part of the aluminum foil and then bring the top part over and seal it up.  When its all folded up y...