Grow Your Own Magazine

Hi all

my names Jon and I'm an alcoholic, opps sorry wrong site

Only kidding.

I found this site while trying to find out the best ways to dry chilli's as i have just caught the gardening bug proper. it all started when i was bought some Jalapeño chilli seeds by a friend and i grow them on the kitchen window.

now i have a 6x4 greenhouse with about 7 different variety's of chilli's(and yes i know your not meant to keep more than 1 together because of cross pollination but there for personal use and i ain't got the space for more house's)

so Hello everyone

Hello, welcome to the vine
are you growing anything other than chillies

Hi Jon. It doesn't matter about cross-pollination for your chillies if you are just going to eat them. It only matters if you keep the seed to sow next year. If you buy (or keep some in the packet) each year there's no problem. Have you got any taste buds left?

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vegheaven.blogspot.com Updated Aug 27th 2008

hi Jon and welcome to the vine
Are yo growing anything else??

Hi jonny, welcome to the vine. This growing lark really gets ya doesn't it?!

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Imagination is everything, it is a preview of what is to become.

Chillies, fab!!! Unfortunately I'd be the only one in my family to eat them

Welcome to the vine..

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Lumpyjumper

http://lumpyjumpers.blogspot.com

updated 28 Feb 08 - preparation for the growing season

Jonny, if you are still looking for a way of drying your chillies you might like to look into a dehydrator, cheapest I've found is from Westfalia

Food Dehydrator from Westfalia at our Kitchen inside the Household shop

They have even reduced the price since we bought ours and it works a treat

hi jon, hahaha on the joke, i am new too, lets hope we learn lots, seem a lot of great advice is out there:-)

Cheers for the welcome every1 nice to find another forum to lose myself in.

as for stuff I'm growing yeah pretty much all chilli's i do have 1 tomato plant for the other-half and a melon plant thats the kids oh yeah a couple bell pepper plants as well but my main crop is chilli's.

I've got 5 jalapeño, 5 habanero, 5 scotch bonnet, 1 red cherry, 1 Hungarian hot wax, 5 bolivian rainbow, 2 birds eye and 15 Naga's growing at the moment all from seed.

I'm well pleased because i am normally useless at growing things

Quick question.
how big are the trays in the dehydrator you cant really tell from the picture.

cheers
jon

Approx 12 inches diameter

What about depth
could i put a full chili in and dry it or do i have to cut them in half

Hi
I bought an amazing chilli plant last year from Gardeners World Live called "ring of fire" my partner only wanted it for the name - in his wisdom he decided to de frost one in the microwave when making a curry. well i'm sure you can guess the rest. it exploded, my son had an asthma attack and he ended up cooking the curry with a teatowel tied round his face.
This year i've gone for a Bangalore Torpedo (?)
Good luck with the plants

They are 1 inch deep.

You should have no trouble putting in a whole chilli.

The kids bought a book (some say the bible) about dehydrating by Mary Bell.

The recomendation for most things that are dense, like strawberries is about 5mm thick but then again you can dry halves of toms.

I suppose it's a case of the thicker and denser the item, the longer it's going to take.

OH filled the thing up with about 4 pounds of strawberries yesterday and it took just over 6 hours.

Now this is a 250 watt unit so I make that 1.5 Kwh and I think I pay about 19p per Kwh so that works out at about 30p to do the drying.

just ordered one.
cheers,

Hey Jon, welcome to the vine!

So you like it HOT HOT HOT then... We haven't tried chillis becos we dont have a greenhouse

Have fun chatting to people, if you want to know about moi, the one and only happybunny. Look at my intro titled Um Hi!!!

Luvin All
Stacey x

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Stacey xXx

13 years young. Random. Happy.
Yup, thats me! It's HappyBunny!

Hey there - sorry, had to butt in here. Don't let your lack of a greenhouse put you off growing chillis! What started me off growing was growing chillis and tomatoes last year - I grew the lot on my window sill! I had way more chillis than I could use and ended up giving heaps away.

Oh, and welcome aboard, Jon - sorry to hijack your thread!

Rob

No worries Rob

that how i started off as well, couple of chilli plants on the kitchen window sill turned into over 30 in the greenhouse with about 2 to 3 hundred seeds left to sow.

I have a design (so far in my head) for a solar dryer. The simple version is simply hanging things under the roof of conservatory (or nearest you have) but this is a version for placing in the garden for maximum effect. It relies on the ability of a black-painted surface to absorb sunheat by day and give off heat at night (if you have a lean-to greenhouse, painting the wall it leans to black does the same thing, I think they call it a Trobe wall, but not sure of the spelling). The dryer has a twin-wall polycarbonate roof (but if you can get hold of a no-longer-wanted double-glazing panel so much the better), and a mesh floor on which the food rests, with plenty of ventilation (but not too much draught) and some black-painted bricks at the base. I am going to have to experiment with depths and ratios of ventilation to insulation when I can actually get to build it. If you want SUN dried, it might be a good cheat.....

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Flowers come in too many colours to see the world in black-and-white.

Some of the drawbacks to sun/air drying is that the length of time it takes means that the sugars are likely to get bacteria build up or you would have to do like the commercial producers and sulphur the food to stop this. The other thing we are disadvantaged in this country is the relatively high humidity levels we have.