A chilli by any other name...

Well as the forest continues its relentless growth and windowsill space becomes more valuable than Manhattan real estate there have been some encouraging successes along the way.  The eight Black Naga seeds planted have all sprouted and are looking healthy. They did take a long time to appear but I understand that this is not unusual with the hotter varieties.

The Black Naga chilli seedlings

Likewise, nearly all the yellow scotch bonnet chillies have sprouted.  These were seeds collected from a chilli that I bought from Sainsbury's and rescued before the rest of it was consigned to a particularly tasty Levi Roots' curry. The fact that so many have grown is encouraging, particularly considering that the cost of two scotch bonnet chillies wasn't a great deal more than the cost of a packet of seeds.

I have had one failure, of the five Red Cherry seeds I planted, not one has reared its head. It may have been a duff packet of seeds or poor planting conditions, too hot, too cold, to damp or dry etc..  Thankfully I do have some spare seeds so I'll give them another try. If that fails then I may sulk a little and pretend I never wanted them in the first place.

The hall of shame, labels from some of the seeds that failed to sprout

With so many varieties on the go it's been something of a challenge keeping tabs on them all. It's cost a fortune in plant labels but, fingers crossed, all the chillies are correctly named and will remain so.  The traditional plant labels and waterproof marker are an easy and cost-effective way of marking up plants but it's hard to find them attractive and for the full grown plants I want something more aesthetically pleasing that won't wash off in the rain or fade in the sun.

The finished stamped copper plant labels.

Once again I've managed to find the most complicated method of doing it but I'm happy with the results.  I've obtained some thin copper plant labels from the local garden centre and a letter-punch set from Screwfix.  It's tedious and fiddly work and my first few attempts were very amateurish, but the labels will last and once the copper obtains a nice verdigris they should mellow into the garden nicely.