Page 19 - Simply Veg 4 2022

Trying new things: progress update EMILY PLUMB FNVS
In this SV magazine, we wanted to give an update on how our new varieties have got on for this year.
Vampire chilli peppers
Well, these haven’t disappointed – their eye- catching purple foliage, stems and flowers have certainly delivered. It turns out the fruits are purple-ly black too – who’d have guessed it?! At the time of writing (at the start of August), we have plenty of fruits set so we’re just waiting for these to ripen now. We understand that this is when they turn bright red, but we’ll have to wait and see.
They haven’t taken much looking after really, we have supported each plant with a cane and tied the stems to it every so often. The plants are not particularly tall, but we find that pepper and chilli plants often need some extra support once they get
the weight of the fruit on their branches. Otherwise, the branches can often snap
off which can render the fruits useless if they’re not ready to be picked at the point it happens.
Nimrod
We fed them with a high nitrogen liquid feed before they started to set fruit and have fed with a high potash liquid feed since that point.
Other than that, it’s just keeping the slugs and snails off them. We find that they seem to love chewing holes in our peppers and chillies – not the thing we would’ve put them
One Ball Courgette
down as having a taste for, but they seem to!
Nimrod cucumbers
We’re also impressed with the Nimrod cucumbers. As advertised, they are extremely heavy cropping and unlike lots of cucumbers, the plants are able to sustain lots of fruits at once (as you can see from the photo). They also taste nice and grow to a larger size than we initially expected.
We have supported the plant with
a bamboo cane, and it’s now starting
to make its way across the roof of the greenhouse. Fingers crossed that they’ll be a photo of some cucumbers hanging down from across the greenhouse roof in a later addition of the SV magazine.
These are fed with a high nitrogen liquid feed whenever we think they need it but are otherwise just kept watered so that their compost doesn’t dry out.
One Ball courgettes
We’ve had a bit of a disaster with courgettes across the board this year, which is really disappointing. None of
our plants seem to be producing fruits as rapidly as we’re used to. In fact, at the time of writing, we’ve only had a single One Ball courgette off the plant! It’s not for want of trying though, so we think it’s more of a reflection on the temperatures we’ve been subjected to in the South of England over recent weeks and months as opposed to the variety.
Therefore, we’ll almost certainly be giving it another chance next year. The plant looks healthy enough, and it is forming fruits, however they just don’t ever seem to swell and then just shrivel up and fall off. We’re hoping that as the temperatures start to cool as we head into the autumn that the plants have a bit of an easier time of it and that there’s still time for us to get a few more courgettes off the plant. We’ll let you know in the next SV magazine!
Vampire Chiliies
Simply Vegetables 19