Via this channel, I hope to deliver informative videos of my efforts to grow vegetables both on my small allotment plot and in my very small garden. You will also find numerous videos of me cooking and preserving, especially the vegetables that I grow.
Located in Cam, Gloucestershire (United Kingdom) puts me in hardiness Zone 9 (RHS H3) and boy does that cold wind blow up the River Severn to the allotment!
I hope you will gain something from the videos, just as I have from watching other channels.
Feel free to subscribe and hit the bell button to keep you informed of my new uploads. Becoming a member will give you extra perks - seek out the JOIN tab. I'd like to upload weekly if possible but, hey, the best laid plans and all that!!
I still don't get how that first one was so hot! The rest I picked from the plant were like normal paprika, mild and tasty! (PS makes me chuckle too! LOL)
Well Steve, i wasn't going to laugh at your misfortune as you put it but seeing as you and your mate called me a knob i am now 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 As for those wonderful Chillies 🌶🌶🌶at first when you were saying that it wasn't the Paprika i was thinking 'oh crap i was thinking of growing Paprika next season' then in the end it was a rogue one, who would have thought that a rogue seed dropped into the Paprika seeds before sending them off. Have a good week my ex-mate😂🖕🖖😂 Barry (Wirral)
Barry's a knob LOL But they were very bland toms even if the didn't come from Wigan 😂 No, the rogue fruit was just one of the chillies from the plant - the rest were all Paprika like. Weird. Imagine if I had put that into a chill con carne - it would have ruined it! 1kg of mince down the drain!
Oh Steve that just made laugh till I teared up. Then I felt bad laughing at your pain...even though it was self inflicted. Great video and I loved the tom tasting even if we lost visual.
Absolutely brilliant video Steve! Gordon Bennett! 😂 A word of advice, wear gloves gloves before you start touching/ harvesting from warm to hot, placing one chilli down to taste one at a time. This might of been better doing somewhere out the wind. Sometimes, if chilli's are grown too close together outside they can cross pollinate. Either that or you you got the hot paprika variety. We lost our 3yr old chilli plants this spring due to fungus gnats and this years one's have been pants since aphids somehow got inside the house! I have trimmed them back and they are re gaining growth, so hopeful for next year. Might be worth lowering the volume of the mouth eating parts for people wearing headphones. You have given me the idea to grow more cayenne and paprika next year and not so many very hot peppers as we use more of those. Thai Dragon is nice for Asian foods. I find dried chilli's of ones that have been frozen have different profiles from fresh. I envy you being able to drink milk now as i can't handle so much fresh dairy. I know it's just a bit of fun but try taste testing with water in between as the sugars and acidity from the drinks can influence the outcome, especially as you were all drinking different drinks. Can't remember the fruit but there is one that you can eat that makes lemons taste sweet like orange and not acidic. Do you know of the ones i am talking about? I wonder what would happen if you had one of those and then tasted the chilli's? Really enjoyed this video Steve! Our child is on about just above hot chilli peppers, bit of cayenne and chilli flake level atm. It has been great to use some more in dishes that call for it in flavour profiling. I can eat Thai spicy but sometimes i just prefer the flavours than to be over powered by spice. Nothing recorded from other people but saw you were at Malvern. Looking forward to that video. Take care. x
Some great advice there, many thanks! Like many others, I didn't do any filming at the Malvern Show. It was much the same as every other year, for me, and there seemed to be less entrants for the giant veggies.
I adore growing chillies...beautiful plants, and such an array of fruit. My current favourites are aji lemon and buena malata. I think you'd better stick to tomato taste tests 😂
7:15 Genuine concern here! Thought you'd bitten into something in the million Scoville range; nasty surprise when you're expecting a mild flavoursome bite.
Oh go on do it do it 😂😂 we all scream at the video. And he does not let us down 🤣🤣🤣. I don’t eat hot chillies but I do love watching someone else torture themselves. Gordon Bennett is right my god that was within a second of eating it. 2024 the year of the absolutely nothing is normal 🤦♀️. Great update keep the Pepto Bismal handy, Ali 🌞🥶🇨🇦
Honest, Ali, that really was a rogue fruit from a plant that had been producing lovely tasty mild paprikas all season! How the (swear word) was I to know this would blow my mind? LOL
@@DigwellGreenfingers I'm told chocolate works as an edible fire retardant, too. It's all to do with the capsaicin being fat-soluble, allegedly. What works best of all, however, is not chowing down on a big bit while the camera is running! 😝
@@jonathanrichards593 You'd think at this age I'd know better LOL Maybe a video for the future, "What works best as a fire retardant?" Milk, Yoghurt, Cottage Cheese, Chocolate, Olive Oil 🤣
One for the pickled shallots🤣 Good ole SS wins again ... Mind you I still like a Gardeners Delight😋 ... Lets face it even the crap ones home grown are better than most supermarket ones.
I stopped growing chillies a couple of years ago as I found the heat inconsistent from fruit to fruit on the same plant. I just buy chilli powder now; no more Russian roulette for me.
🥵 "that's not a paprika" I was screaming at my TV before you bit into it, that's something else! 😂😂 Always a fun surprise when they catch you out like that. Very entertaining video mate! Those variegated sugar rush stripeys will probably need another month before they go completely ripe, they will turn an orange / peach colour with some nice striping. Glad you enjoyed it! 😁
No, these are pukka paprikas, can't recall the name but not the usual sweet pepper that is passed off as paprika. Grew them last year (and saved the seed) - made loads of paprika powder, sauces etc lovely. Blew me away that one fruit as the rest on the plant were normal
@@DigwellGreenfingers haha, sometimes there's that one pod that's million times hotter than the rest, no explanation why! I find that shishitos are like that!
Call me wicked, but I had to smile, your face was a picture. A few years ago I lived in the Caribbean, I had a business making picture frames. One lady had ordered something which later she could not afford, so I did a deal with her. Let me have some fruit and vegetables and I will call it quits. Well, she brought me loads of plump yellow chilli peppers, bags and bags of passion fruit, soursop, mango, plantain and many more. I thought I will have to make juices from most of the fruit and preserve the chillis. Little did I know at the time, the chilli's were Scotch Bonnet and I had not bothered to pop gloves on. That was the worst I have ever suffered, the burning was frightening and my hands were on fire for 2 days. I had to be extremely careful with any use of the toilet, that was most deffo a glove moment.
Yer that taste test 😂😂😂 Love it. But tbh I grow a he rainbow chilli today and it blow My head off straight from them plant and I’m okish with them normally 😂😂
7.00 mins in, thats not a hot one hahaha, you could have fooled me Steve, it just so happens i was taking a sip of my coffee just then and that went over the dining table, i couldnt help myself. Now i know why i dont eat chillis lol
I have a recipe on my channel for 2 types of chilli sauce if you want to have a crack at it. I love watching your stuff, you're thick west country accent is soothing to listen too! 😁😁
Just watched and commented! It will be next year now as I changed my mind and made a Chilli Tomato Ketchup with this lot. (Video soon) I am slowly reverting back to a Gloucestershire accent. Spending 24 years in the Royal Navy, you tend to create a weird accent with bits of scouse, cockney, geordie, jock and taff etc thrown in
Love your videos. I shouldn't laugh but at 7:00 mins it reminds me of the guy a few years ago who tries his homemade Lemoncello 😂 Hope you've recovered mate.
Plenty of saved seeds there Steve. Shame about the holes from the pests but you still did pretty well 👍 I'm a fan of reggae too 😂 Wine tasting my kind of outing 😂 Lovely seeing you at Malvern on Sunday ❤
It was great meeting up Linda! To be honest, seeing everyone is the best part of the show for me. Been digging (no pun intended) a bit further about the holes in the beans and unless most of the cotlydon has been eaten they will be okay. Most of the sites focus on the beans being unsellable when they are green. Next year I'll check them as I crop them. Have a great week!
@@DigwellGreenfingers yes fabulous all meeting up wasn't it. That's interesting about the beans still being useable. It'll be interesting to see how they grow next year. Maybe next year's experiment? 😂 You have a great rest of the week too, thank you ❤️
No need. The jars are sterilised and the acid content is high enough. Water bathing and pressure canning are largely an an American thing, with only a small number of people doing this in other countries.
Currently on sale for two hundred quid. Yeah... it looks like a well designed bit of kit, apart from the wimpy light, but the markup on these must be ridiculous. I don't see where you can order a replacement light on the Vegepod site, so I assume it can't be replaced. You could probably jury-rig a replacement using, one of those ten quid LED growlights (which is what it looks like), but if it was me, I'd buy some Amazonbasics aluminium shelves, a Lechuza BALCONERA 50cm self-watering pot and a Fecida 65W grow light (it's adjustable so you can turn it down. That 18w unit is okay if you have it near a window, but nowhere near enough to grow healthy plants indoors, away from a window. I'm leery of grow lights that don't even have a fan to cool them do because heat will nuke LEDs really quickly. I've had Aerogardens, the Ikea hydroponics kit, when they did it, and a couple of no name hydroponic kits (which I might convert to soil after seeing this) and the lights always give up in the end. That said, I have a grow tent in my kitchen for seedlings (and overwintering a couple of really productive pepper plants this Winter, hopefully) so the looks don't matter to me. I assume you got this as a freebie? You're supposed to declare it in the video if you have. That Amazon disclaimer isn't enough. Not that I'm a narc, but you don't want to lose the channel. If you paid for it, all good but, Jesus, did you not price around? Anyway, subbed. Can't knock a combination of nerd stuff, cooking and gardening. Basically me.
If you check the start of the video, the paid promotion flag is there. Had me worried so I checked twice. Not sure that the light is "wimpy" being full sun spectrum with added UV. Certainly better that every other indoor growing system I have tried, except maybe the LetPot LPH-Max (but replacements are not available for that either) At 50k hours life and 16 hours a day that is about 8 years of life. I plan for 5 years for my hydroponics and other growlight set ups, so it compares favourably. I think my results prove the unit's worth and it is around the same price at the LetPot Max Hydroponics System 21-Pod and 2-Pod. I have tested a few that went straight in the bin after LOL I chat with the guys on the Vegepod stands at the gardening shows I go to and take some pics to show how well it does, and twice they have asked to keep them for their stand! Hope you have a great week and welcome onboard 🙂
@@DigwellGreenfingers Sorry, man. Must've missed the paid promotion bit. Are you using it near natural light? Stick it in a room away from natural light and you'll see what I mean about the LED light, particularly when new plants are shaded by the faster growing plants. When you did that refresh video and were adding plants around the balms, the new plants wouldn't stand a chance with just the LED. I don't really rate any of the "pod" system hydroponics, but get that most people need something that doesn't look like a Steampunk nightmare in the kitchen. I tend to grow stuff in soil under grow lights. Hydroponics is good, but nowhere near as resilient as soil. I've got a large Vegepod in my greenhouse (which was a mistake, not looking forward to emptying it out and moving it so I can replace it with a Vegtrug, which is a bit smaller) and I like it but the Vegepod with stand is about £450, which is steep, but £250 when not on sale for the Kitchen Garden is nuts, to me. Look at an iDoo 20 pod system (£109, less £25 voucher) and either just fill the planters with soil and forget about the self-wicking (or jury rig something simply enough) or ditch the containers entirely and get one of the 50cm Balconera (£28 for charcoal 50cm). So £85 quid for a larger amount of non-watering soil, or a self-wicking system with slightly less volume of soil for £113 or so. I'm currently experimenting with the iDoo, just as a Kratky, with salads and it's fine. The light is decent, 34 watts, but I'm still using a mylar reflective "tent" to maximise it. Having watched this I'm getting a dozen of the Balconeras and a couple more Amazon Basics 5-Shelf Storage Units. I'll probably buy more Fecida growlights eventually but for the years I was on Amazon Vine (no longer - thanks Brexit!) I have accumulated a trove of grow lights. Just have to watch the drugs squad doesn't raid me with all the strange lights coming from the spare room.
@@AntonGully The Kitchen Garden was on a drawer unit in my living room, no daylight. Sat a metre away from the LetPot LPH-MAX for a trial and just about equal yields of Golden Hour tomatoes from each, using the same nutrients. It is in the greenhouse now with the LED hood removed so it acts like the classic Vegepod (I have a large one too) but to be honest, it was better indoors with the lights on. I won't engage in conversation about iDOO, one of those I trialled was the one that was binned, and the other was sold on ASAP with a note for the buyer that the tank drain plug area leaks. Really badly made IMHO. Most of my shelf stuff is lit by SpiderFarmer gear and I cannot fault it. No external drivers and a very low downward reflected heat output. Mars Hydro unit continually fried my seedlings!
I’ve never grown peas galore are they a new variety🤣🤣, cheeky bugger. 2:53 wow you could string them and make a necklace. I’m trying what is supposed to be a bush variety of broad bean so fingers crossed they do well and I can start saving seed. Is it the smart thing to do 🤔 I know I’m not happy about that bloody t-Rex 🦖down the street 🤦♀️. Anyway truth be told I enjoy saving seed it’s something to do at the end of a season. Hope you had an awesome weekend at Malvern, Ali 🥶🌞🇨🇦
When I was walking on a black sand beach on Montserrat (and losing a layer of skin off my soles as it was so hot), I picked up a load of bean looking things. I noticed they had a hole in and I thought, make a necklace. So I did. Anyhow, 3 weeks late my cabin mate mentioned that there were a few flies in our cabin and when I opened my drawer a swarm flew out. Seems that the bean looking things all had magots in (hence the holes) and they pupated into adults! A quick dose of fly spray sorted them out - I wasn't a gardener then but it's easy to see how an "alien invader pest" can be imported !!! Lesson learned.
Hi Steve, another great video, showing how you save seeds with plenty of useful help & advice. Great technique putting them in the bag. Thanks for sharing and take care 😊
@@DigwellGreenfingers I saw a tip online, I put seed pods into a netted bag (from Asda 20p, fresh produce dept) hanging them in my polytunnel to dry out 😉
@@christinebrooks6364 That's a good idea! I'll do that next year (and labek them properly LOL I've seen those bags used to put over flower heads to stop cross-pollination and also on pollinated flowers to stop pests eating them.
I've had a decent crop of beans this year but everything else was rather disappointing so saving seeds isn't a problem this year. I ho0e to buy more varieties from Real Seeds next year as beans produce so much food in a small area.
If you can get hold of any, then I 100% recommend both Ferarri and Faraday as dwarf French beans. I put 9 of each in its own square foot and I have been harvesting like mad since July
@@DigwellGreenfingers I plant mi e straight into my used potato buckets and compost with some fresh manure and it works well for me in October as I can bring them into the Polytunnel if the temperature drops but you could put a fleece on them if it gets cold on the plot. I've not tried Faraday so might give them a blast next year.
Lovely load of legumes. I love H. Greenshaft and have grown D.Provence in the past and I like those too. I had a lovelu guffaw at the outtake. All the best Steve.
I was lucky the peas did not spill any further, Mags, as I had already dropped some on the ground! It would have been a case of growing a pea medly LOL
What a coincidence, I've just this morning podded my pea beans and blue lake beans and now enjoying watching someone else do it 😂😅. I'd be interested in a couple of the Gloucester beans if you want to do a seed exchange??😁🌱☀️
