Monty Don from BBC Gardeners World has beaten me to it this year and sowed his chilli Pepper seeds on Friday 19th March. If you didn’t see it, it was a brilliant and inspiring episode, watch it on catch up on the BBC iPlayer. Gardeners world will be following the progress of their chilli peppers and showing us how to continue growing them on. I thought this was very good idea and I look forward to seeing what progress mine have made in the following weeks compared to Monty’s.

Yesterday, the first day of Spring, we sowed our chilli pepper and sweet pepper seeds.

We sow them 2 seeds to a cell as I find them easier to prick out of cells than a seed tray. Place the seeds on top of moist soil and cover loosely with compost. Cover the tray and bring indoors to a windowsill above a radiator. They do take up to a few weeks sometimes to germinate, so don’t give up on the seedlings coming through the soil.

This year we are sowing the following varieties:

Sweet Pepper – Tangerine Dream

Sweet Pepper – Tangerine Dream was bought from Premier seed direct. It’s a compact plant producing a lot of small sweet orange peppers and is perfect for containers.

I chose this variety as it takes up a small space and for its small orange peppers.

Sweet Pepper – Corbaci

Sweet Pepper – Corbaci was bought from Premier Seed Direct. This is a Turkish variety which produces corkscrew thin peppers looking a bit like chilli’s turning through the colours to red. Peppers can reach up to 12 inches long.

I chose this variety because I loved the corkscrew long peppers that would brighten the vegetable plot with the colour changes from yellow, orange to red.

Chilli Pepper – Long Slim

Chilli Pepper – Long Slim is from Kings Seeds, we got this seed packet from our Kitchen Garden magazine subscription so we are sowing it this year.

This is a very hot chilli, long slender chilli’s turn from green to red.

These chillis are too hot for me! But my husband loves them.

I can’t wait to see when the seedlings pop up, that’s the best part.