Miles Collins

How to pollinate the bhut jolokia chilli by hand

A post by request…..

This is in response to a number of requests I have received via the blog and e mail for a straight forward guide to growing the world’s hottest chillies. It has proved to be an incredibly popular subject even if some of you are bored to death by it by now!
Note: This […]

Natural Beauty in the Herb Garden

Despite my recent misfortunes on the vegetable growing front the herb garden rarely fails me. Their resilience to weather and pests can be remarkable and during times of horticultural dire straits offer comfort and solace to the miserable gardener.
I grew clary sage last year for the specific purpose of photographing […]

Container Grown Chillies in England…

Of all the varieties of chilli I am growing the Maules chilli has come on the quickest in my polytunnel. I was quite concerned earlier on in the year because they out grew their pots remarkably quickly leading me to think they had simply ‘bolted’ and would produce little else other […]

At last!

Some twenty weeks after sowing the world’s hottest chilli, the bhut jolokia I have finally got some fruit buds appearing.
Despite the less than satisfactory weather conditions for growing chillies or anything else for that matter I seem to have achieved what I set out to do; to grow the hottest chilli in the world […]

Against all Odds (could be a song)

Here’s a post to inspire you with hope during your darkest hour, a tale of cold days and nights, savage attack, flooding, drought, neglect, low self-esteem and a fightback straight out of a Rocky Balboa movie script. Yes, it’s my broad bean plants.
Having planted my strong young plants out […]

An horticultural restorative in a time of need..

Having endured and continue to endure a few weeks I’d rather forget about I look to the small things in life to keep me going. It’s not that easy to write a daily blog during a seventy hour working week, inspiration can be somewhat short on the ground, […]

How to grow red hot chillies…

With the probable exception of some of my photographic posts more people visit this blog because of the posts on chillies than for any other reason, and the hotter the chillies the better.
As some of you will know I am growing habanero chilies as a precaution against my crop of […]

Fantastic tangy fruit for summer

I love eating gooseberries, there is something very English about them to me, maybe it’s the way they are used here, in flans, fools, crumbles etc or the fact that they are quite tart and different to other fruits.
I grow red and green gooseberries, they line the back of my fruit […]

For fast results reach for the fresno!

Of all the varieties of chilli I have grown this has been the fastest to fruit. The plants raced on ahead of all the others and I feared the worst. Usually when a chilli plant grows quickly it ends up producing a lot of leaf and little, if any, […]