New To This!
HeavyMetalPlantMan
Posts: 8
Hi Everyone,
Apologies from the start if I have posted this in the wrong place.
I'm Rob, 25 from the Midlands and completely new to this. So any advice/tips would be great!
I have been keen on the idea of growing some chillies (love hot food!) For a while now and my brother bought be a Chilli growing kit for Christmas. So finally, I have decided to take the plunge and have a go. My mom and dad have an unused greenhouse in the garden that just needs a bit of a clean out (the deal is that if I sort it out I'm welcome to use it). Where do I start? Chili's and Tomatoes are definite but what other fruit and veg do you guys recommend for a beginner?
I shall continue to read up on stuff on the Internet in the mean time but I look forward to hearing your thoughts
Happy planting!
Rob
Posts
Hi Rob,
Monty Don had a series on TV recently called 'Big ideas, small spaces' episode 1 followed a chap wanting to grow chillies too! Might be worth watching to get tips and hints.
Monty offers advice and sends the chappy to a chilli expert - for a tasting session and more tips from experts.
The programme is available on iplayer - enjoy!
I am growing some winter salad and cauliflower in my greenhouse at mo - about to sow carrots this weekend! I am a novice and have been told these are easy to grow.
Good luck
Thanks Nettles! Not very well at the moment and can't seem to sleep so I may have to watch a bit off Monty to pass the night away!
always manages to send me to sleep
Best of luck Rob, sometimes we have to learn from our mistakes with growing things. I often read a lot first, but the things that really stick are when they say, 'the mistake novices usually make is....' and I think, yeah I did that!
I find carrots and lettuces the easiest to grow. Grow stuff you like and buy already. I prioritise my veg growing in that way. Not much point growing anything you don't like or wouldn't regularly buy at the shops.
We grow tomatoes, chillis and cucumber in our greenhouse, thought its mostly chillis. We start off our chillis from seed now in modules in a propagator and when they get a few pairs of leaves, we pot them up. My OH grows them in a heated greenhouse then until the good weather comes and then just waters twice a day and feeds them with something called Chilli Focus. Its the summer heat that gets the plants to flower (if you don't have them get some of those auto opening things that you attach to your greenhouse windows in the roof), and leave the door open on nice days and the bees and insects will pollinate the chillis for you, or you can pollinate the flowers yourself with a cotton bud. I grow a variety of cucumber called crystal lemon which look like orange sized yellow melons. They are very tasty and prolific. We grow all this in pots, not planted into the ground in the greenhouse.
Thanks everybody for the wonderful advice
i assure you its all been taken on board and i just cant wait to get out and give it a try now!
That's great advice, thank you Phillipa!
I've heard that some of the milder Chili's you can start off Jan/Feb, but the hotter ones it's best waiting a bit longer for. Suppose if all goes well then I should have a steady and varied crop for a fair few months!
Either way, I think I'm gonna tackle cleaning this greenhouse out tomorrow, weather permitting and make it a Plant Paradise!
We start all varieties off at the same time and we have had comments from friends and family members who are used to hotness that ours were hot.