24th August

This year has been a year of fantastic growth in all the crops, the warm and wet weather we have been having after the very dry warm May, has brought everything on.

Every year we grow Hungarian hot wax chillies, the large yellow ones, we also usually do some Jalapeno’s and we always try to grow some Habanero’s.

Every year the Habanero’s have failed, but this year we have twenty plants that are huge, and they have thousands of flowers on them, and some chillies coming.

Usually we have a wee eating contest as we are harvesting them.                                         With the Hungarian hot wax it’s a wee bit of a lucky dip, some are mild and some are pretty hot.                                                                                                                                            The Jalapeno chillies are usually HOT and it’s not much fun trying them.                             But the Habanero chillies, are on a different scale, so I’m not going to be joining in with that contest, Korma curries are as far as I usually venture.

Chillies are measured by Scoville heat units ? whatever that is.

Hungarian hot wax is given a wide range between 1,000 and 15,000 Scoville units ours tend to be nearer the lower end.

Jalapeno are between 2,500 and 8,000 Scoville units.

Habanero on the other hand are measured between 100,000 and 350,000 Scoville units.

That’s a huge heat increase in heat.

So when these are ready, I’m no trying them, and if you get them, go canny on how many you use.

We think we will be harvesting these pretty soon, so if you like Hot food we will have loads.

Out in the field the Beetroot and Courgettes are huge.                                                                    The onions are still growing even after we have harvested them , usually by now the tips are starting to die of, but there is no sign of that, and when we are harvesting them, they are still growing in the crates, so they are going to be huge by the time they stop growing.

The leeks are some of the tallest leeks I have ever seen, and we are needing to take of a lot of the tip as we dress them, just so we can fit them in the crates to get them out of the field.

One of the best growing crops though, and it wins first prize every year, is the weeds, this year they proving a real problem in keeping on top of them, but we are slowly getting there.

We are going back over the leek crops yet again, this will be the third bed weed the leeks will have had when we are done.