KITCHEN GARDENER
Helping you get your best-ever fruit and veg
It’s time to start my overwintered plants back into growth while also prepping the greenhouse
Not many people grow chillies as perennial plants, but it’s quite simple if you choose the right species, with Capsicum pubescens the most reliable type. I’ve had the same chilli plant in an old bucket for over four years now, cutting it back to overwinter in the frost-free lean-to. However, it’s now time to get it growing.
By increasing the watering and moving it to somewhere a little warmer, it triggers the plant into putting on fresh growth, meaning it will flower and fruit way before chilli plants sown from seed this spring. If you have a favourite variety, make sure to keep it this year, rather than adding it to the compost heap at the end of the season. Then you can produce your own extra-early crops.
Over in the unheated greenhouse, I’m starting to get it ready for adding summer crops. I grow in large troughs full of compost and topsoil and find the plants perform better if I remove a quarter of the substrate and replace it with new compost/manure each year. I add the removed compost to the flower border as a mulch, allowing it to help lighten the clay soil at the same time. Adding more compost to the troughs means there is plenty of nutrition available for new plants, enabling me to grow vigorous, productive plants each year in the same containers. I also like to add a couple of handfuls of blood, fish and bone granules to make sure the troughs have a balanced feed, ready for tomatoes and other hot crops in May.
Along with compost for the troughs, I’m bringing more bags into the protection of the greenhouse so they can warm up over the next few weeks before they are needed. This is also good practice if your compost is excessively wet (maybe it’s been left outside over the last few months). By bringing it under cover you will have a warmer, drier compost to add to containers, meaning your plants won’t suffer from the shock of being transplanted into a cold, wet growing medium.
Stepping up my herb game!
Even though potted herbs were el
