Here at the Farm, as Autumn approaches, our tunnels are at full capacity with chillis ready to pick. We have already been harvesting hundreds of kilograms of chillis throughout the summer but the bulk of our crop is currently being picked. We are still waiting on some varieties to ripen, usually all the Superhot chillis, and hope there’s a bit more sunshine to help them along.
Most of our chillis are processed on site by either mashing (in an industrial sized blender), dried (in an industrial sized dryer) or frozen (yep, in an industrial sized freezer). Along with the chilli picking we are extremely busy with seed collecting from selected plants. We will have collected in excess of a million seeds by the end of the season that all require careful preparation and viability tests. We keep our own seed to grow from for next year and the rest are counted into packets and made available to buy.
If you have chillis growing at home you will, hopefully, be doing the same as us and harvesting the fruits of your labour. As the colder weather begins to return and the drop in daylight hours becomes more evident, chillis will gradually stop producing flowers and new growth. Fruit will continue to ripen if left on the plant and some growers who have the time and space will start the over wintering process. Check our over wintering tips if you would like to keep any plants for next year;
https://southdevonchillifarm.co.uk/pages/growing-faqs?_pos=4&_sid=23bd70d89&_ss=r
In case you hadn’t heard a little earlier this year we attended the RHS Rosemoor Flower show as an an exhibitor. This was an incredible experience for the whole team at the Farm and we were very pleased to receive a five Flower award at our first RHS event! Amrit and Jenny designed a show stopping chilli garden that received a huge amount of praise over the course of the weekend. Pictured is Amrit with the award.
