Garden Bed Update - August 2011

I had mixed success from the garden beds last year, but I think this year will be a lot better as the organic materials from the previous year have had time to decompose and be devoured by the army of worms that lay within.

This time last year, I had put the garden beds in place and filled them with layers of lucerne hay, chicken manure, soil and sugar cane mulch. While I allowed for about 3 months before planting, I think there was still too much nitrogen in the soil for the chilli plants to really flourish in the intense biological conditions.

The above is the one garden bed out of the six that I haven't topped up since last year. Despite layering all the ingredients to the brim of the garden beds, it has sunk heavily to the point that it's now less than 50% full.

The rest of the beds have been topped up with compost that's been in my compost tumbler, dynamic lifter, 6 bags of soil and finally more sugar cane mulch.

When I pull back the top layer of sugar cane mulch from the topped up garden beds I can generally find a magnitude of worms, which to me means they love to feed on the wet sugar cane mulch. I hope that the conditions for the chilli plants this year results in a bumper crop which will in turn be converted to some seriously hot sauce!

The best way to start chilli seeds

The way I germinate chilli seeds is not a conventional method that others would do. I've tried putting seeds in wet paper towel and then in plastic sandwich bags, soaking the seeds in a weak tea solution and then planting, and just popping them straight into soil.

But nothing quite beats the method I am now using to germinate my seeds. I have to credit Neil from The Hippy Seed Company for the idea, and it's really made it quite easy and consistent to germinate the seeds.

What we have in the above is a plastic container with 30 lots of coco jiffy pellets, floating on top of water that is heated to 30C with a small fishtank heating rod, and a few air stones at the bottom to just circulate some oxygen around.

While I've been able to germinate with the other methods, this has easily been the most consistent because with a lid on the plastic container I am easily able to keep the humidity at high levels and stop the jiffy pellets from drying out.

As I travel quite a bit, it means I can sort of forget about the chamber other than cleaning the water out once a week and making sure I disinfect it from all the algae that starts to form within the water. Once I see roots penetrating the fabric webbing of the peat pellet, I put the pellet in a small pot with some soil and move to under a LED light somewhere.

These 14 plants are house in a small tent in the garage. There's a fan that blows the air around, yet it still has a very high humidity because there are clay balls at the bottom of the orange tray filled with water, and as it evaporates it contributes to the high humidity - which chillies love!

Overwintering chillies

Most people think chillies are annuals, which means they grow, flower, fruit then die.

Chillies are in fact perennials, meaning that if you can keep them alive over winter protecting them from frosts, they'll survive and in fact give you a head start for the new season.

The above is an Asian Birdseye in one of the garden beds that I cut down about a week ago, but it's now sprouted and hopefully will go nuts in the next few weeks as the weather starts to warm up. There is another 14 plants in that garden bed that seem to have survived and have all sprouted.

I grew these from my own seeds, and I have a theory that because I took the seeds from a pod that has already grown in the Melbourne climate seem to be more likely survive our winter.

This one is more of a surprise as it's one of my Bhut's, which are from the Capsicum Chinense family and not really known to survive our winter. Again, this along with another 7 plants in the front row of the garden were grown from seeds taken from previous year plants.

The majority of my other chillies have died, and as I expect this I generally grow extra plants to replace these.

Let's hope I get a head start this year with the overwintered plants, it's definitely been a warmer than usual August here in Melbourne and I expect to be picking some Asian Birdseyes in early to mid November with the way it's heading.