My wife and I have been running our catering business since 1990. Although we love what we do, my real underlying passion has been all things Chilies for around 20 years, yes I’m what’s known as a “Chillihead” With this passion (obsession maybe) we have decided to diversify and create “Devonchilliman”
In 2013 I went from growing around a dozen chili plants at home to growing 200+ plants and rented 5 x plots in a local community shared glasshouse in Teignbridge.I had a very successful harvest of which I decided to use the chillies in our produce & started to make products with them, we then decided to have a catering unit wrapped in a chilli theme and it’s first outing was at “The Great Dorset Chilli Festival” of which was a huge and enjoyable success. The products we sold were ChilliSteakburgers, Chilli Hot Dogs, Pakora Battered Jalapenos. We almost sold out of our entire stock of Jalapenos in the first day but luckily DARTH NAGA and JAMIE SYTHES were at hand & rushed off to the Wiltshire Chilli Farm to harvest more !.
I now rent a 36 meter glasshouse and in 2014 grew 600+ chili plants and now have a website which is www.Devonchilliman.co.uk of which I sold fresh UK grown chilies and sent out via post/courier to my customers. I have just started as of 14th January 2015 sowing my seeds for the 2015 growing season. Last year I soaked the seeds in a week black tea solution as I heard that the tannin in tea softens the seed casing and then I planted them into compost in my Propagator. This year I have soaked some but not all, I currently have almost 400 x seeds in “GRODAN” cubes of which I soaked the cubes in a week solution of “Canna Start” 1ml/1Litre of water they are now in the Propagator set at 27°C and they are starting to germinate already. This I find the exciting part of the season!
After trailing products from Greenhouse Sensations and Growth Technology I am starting to experiment with more advanced propagation techniques this year, namely the hydropod an aeroponic unit.
I plan to move the seedlings when the first set of true leaves appear to the hydropod and am looking forward to the results.
Progress will be updated each month in my column on the ChileFoundry.
