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The 2025 Season
I'm trying a few things this year. I have the remaining plants from last year but not sure how they will fare, so as a backup, I've planted some fresh hab seeds too. I'm also trying standard Thai chillies again for the first time in years. I remember them being very easy to grow and getting a huge harvest.
Fresh seeds, dried for months, now brought back to life with an overnight soaking.Using old supermarket meat trays, carefully spacing the seeds on damp kitchen paper. If they are bunched together, the roots bind and are hard to separate.77 seeds in each trayAnother layer of damp kitchen paper and they are ready to go.I've read conflicting views about dark vs. light for germination so I thought I would try for myself. I clamped the trays together to reduce evaporation and put them on the window sill. Green gingers crossed!As it is January, a heat mat provides a constant warm temperature.These new starter trays look promising.Tools supplied.Very tidy.And built-in LED grow lights, with a timer!Light for 12 hours per day and heat 24/7Taps Aff!Looking good!A little too much heat has resulted in dried soil and dead seedlings!Luckily I had some fresh habs to take some new seeds from.Straight into the soil with these as the cases should already be soft. This has slowed the process but there should be plenty of time for them to develop.As good as the LEDs are, you can't beat real sunlight!Coming on strong.A bit slower than usual but racing along now that spring is here.Time to replant a few into a bigger pot. Not quite warm enough for outdoors at night yet though.Into the big pots for bigger roots.Looking healthy.Three in a pot should be fine.
These are the Thais at the beginning of March.
Luckily though, the seeds are starting to hatch.
Unfortunately, last year's habs died as I put them on the balcony when the temperature was way below zero. Killed them off. Bugger.
36 habanero plants and 36 Thai plants. Let's wait and see...
Three boxes (36 seeds) of Thai chillies waiting for action.
Fresh habs from a local Indian shop. Good quality and remarkably cheap.
The Thai chillies. These are fairly hot but don't have the fruity flavour of Habaneros.
The reincarnation of the 2024 plants. They look healthy enough but they are sprouting buds already. Way too early!
The 2024 season was pretty good, but not spectacular. One good thing was that I didn't get any greenfly invasion. Maybe that was because of  the Aspirin spray that I used. Captain's log here.

The 2023 season was a disaster. My seeds didn't develop and I left it way too late for the Scotch Bonnett plants that I bought. The summer was over by the time they started to ripen.

The 2022 season much better and I tried a lot of different varieties. Photos can be seen here.