Garden: End of May and all is not well!

Alright, so we've had plenty of artichokes and the first ever asparagus from the plot, but the traditional May Hungry Gap looks like running on into June. And it could get a whole lot more serious.

Of course, we can just go to the shops and buy our veggies (we buy onions and potatoes, after all), they might not be organic or as fresh as those from the potager, but we won't starve. But not having any chillies could be considered tantamount to starving and that is looking pretty likely right now. To add insult to injury, chillies are something we just can't buy within a 30km radius, well not the sort that have any heat, anyway! 

Jalapenos

This year I sowed jalapenos, cayenne, red and yellow fatalii, tepin, bhut jolokia, black naga, my own sport of big jim and padron. And of all of those I have just two jalapeno plants and a single black naga which are all so tiny they will have to be overwintered before they produce anything, and two padron planted out in the ground. It has been a ghastly catalogue of no germination or damping off disease.

Yellow Fatalii - lemony, fragrant rockets!

I have enough dried cayenne peppers to get us through the next year, although they will be far from their best by the end, and the freezer still has perhaps a three month supply of yellow fatalii and that will be it. Given that spicy veggie curries and stir fries, or grills spiced up with fatalii hot sauce or jalapeno ketchup are a mainstay of our frugal kitchen, the next year looks like being a little on the bland side!

Tomato & jalapeno ketchup

All may not be totally lost, although not one to greatly engage with the local British immigrant community, I do know there are some chilli heads out there who grow their own, so all may not be lost. I would certainly help out a fellow hot saucer in extremis!