Garden: Seed Sowing at Last

Finally, a few chilli and pepper seedlings are showing their faces.  Maybe spring is on the way, after all.

I don't have a heated propagator or central heating so have to be quite ingenious about getting those seedlings that need heat off to an early start  - peppers, aubergines and chillies.  I've found that if I wait for the weather to warm up enough for the seeds to germinate without help,  I can then be caught out by bad weather at the back end of the year.  We can have a first frost any time between mid October and late December.

Preserving the Harvest and Nursing a Knee

This week I've been laid up with a spannered knee.  Years of abuse plus skiing and snowboarding injuries and subsequent surgery appears to have left my right knee with almost zero feeling.  Well, that's the only reason I can think of for waking up the morning after a few hours of not very aggressive walking, with a knee the size of a watermelon.  Yet oddly without any pain!
A week later and the swelling is much reduced, but alas replaced by pain and quite a lot of instability in the joint.  A life-time of dislocating kneecaps makes me assume that it has just gone big style this time and will eventually all settle back down.  It better had; we are now into September and I expect to be hitting the slopes of Grand Tourmalet at the end of November.
Anyway, not being able to comfortably stand or bend at the knee has made harvesting and preserving this years not so bumper crop of gherkins and Jalapenos a bit of a trial.  Oh, and the local supermarket have all run out of cider vinegar, you cannot get white wine vinegar for love nor money and the clear crystal vinegar renders most pickles inedible.  As the twice pickled vat of radish pods sat at the back of the cupboard will testify.  We'd better try them again soon.

Sweet Chilli Sauce

Now that the garlic and shallots have been harvested and the first chillies are fruiting - only a month late thanks to the non-event which was spring 2013 - it's time to make a first batch of sweet chilli sauce.  The first up are the fatalii, hardly unexpected as the plant was over-wintered indoors and then put back outside in May.

This sauce isn't a long-term keeper, not that it would survive long in this household anyway, but one to eat fresh.