Chillies Galore

As you all know, Lloyd loves chillies. the hotter and more flavoursome the better. Me, not so much! But, I do love growing them for him. I can appreciate how beautiful they are.
This is another area the greenhouse has really come into its own. The chilli harvest this year has been phenomenal and it's still going strong. So much so, in fact, that we actually took out three plants and harvested everything off them because I was simply running out of room, they'd grown so much.

The ones that get to stay ( for a long time hopefully) are the habaneros and a bhut jolokia cross. I also found a rogue, self seeded plant, in the veggie garden from last year. I rescued it and potted it up. Turns out it's a Sudra, very fortunate as this was a favourite last year. It's now thriving in the greenhouse.

Here's Lloyd harvesting some. You can see how many there are!

These are the Chilli Fires -  I think they're some generic type chilli. Lloyd isn't enormously impressed by them so I won't grow them again. Nice enough flavour, but not much heat.

These, however, are a huge success. They're a mixture of the habaneros ( Lloyd's favourites) and the bhuts. I do think these are the prettiest of chillies,

And these are some of the cayenne and I think there's a couple of Anaheims  in there too. I won't be growing either of them next year. But they are really good for padding out the sauces he makes.

Lloyd has made a lot of sauce already this year so we decided to dry these ones. We've done it 2 different ways. One the good old fashioned string them up way!

To do this you just need a needle and some thread. I thread them near the base of the green stalk, where it's strongest.

And the other way was to put some whole ones in the dehydrator and see what happened. It was a HUGE success!
We filled it up and put it to about 50 degrees. It took 2 days, but we turned it off at night to be safe. The result was perfectly dried, whole chillies. Lloyd is particularly pleased with the habaneros.

It's worked so well that I think we'll do more of the habaneros. So, this years chillies - huge success. Oh how I love the greenhouse!