I don't know if it's just my planting technique or what, but if I only plant a few seeds then the chances are nothing germinates. There's always next week to put in a few more, and then the week after....but this year I planted up all the chilli seeds that we have been saving, all at the same time - they are all seeds from the previous year dating back maybe 5 or 6 years to the original plants.
This year, what with one wedding or the other, things got delayed a bit as we didn't want to have seedlings needing daily watering when our friends were doing us a huge favour just looking after Monty and Pip. Taking care of numerous beans, chillis and cucumber seedlings was not as important, so when we got back from Japan we started the planting. We had 7 varieties of chillis which were just germinating when we went to Paris. This week I have been planting the biggest of them straight out into the veg patch, the smaller ones have gone into yoghurt pots or small plant pots.
When I'd finished that this morning, I went and did a head count and discovered that there are just over 200 seedlings!
If they all grow well, they are easy to dry and then grind down for storing. Or we freeze them whole and slice as needed. Or we slice and bottle them in white wine vinegar, especially the 'jalopeño' variety.
The next thing is finding the right place for the remaining seedlings to live. There are places ready dug that just need watering ready for planting up, but I'm not sure there's enough space yet. And as the temperature is way above June's normal - it's been hovering around 30° this week and today reached 32° - neither of us fancies going digging. But we have lots of pots and lots of compost so maybe they'll end up living in pots.
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