So many #chilli varieties... I want to grow them all!! Browsing [Fatalii](

Fatalii Seeds

Fataliiseeds.net is home to all who are passionate about chili! Don’t Just Grow chilis, let chilis grow you!

) right now and have a browser tab "shortlist" 19 varieties long, plus have about 4 shortlisted from [ChilliChump](

ChilliChump Seeds

ChilliChump Seeds Homepage

Quality Chilli Pepper Seeds, expertly grown by ChilliChump! Loads of varieties, Global Delivery!

). All quite aside from the fact my current seed collection contains at least 28 varieties of seed. 😅 Plus next year I'm supposed to be cutting down the number of varieties I try to grow lol. (Did about 20 this year, though only really successfully grew on about 17 I think.)

OK, well, #allotment happened. Harvested tomatoes and chillies and got a small start on polytunnel clearance. We're hanging on with the tomatoes as long as we can, but that won't be much longer. There are some decent sized fruit still and they're picking up a hint of colour so if we clear it out entirely within a couple of weeks we should have fair success shelf-ripening a chunk of the remaining crop. Anyway... take a moment to admire this amazing Rocoto #chilli flower.... this variety is worth it for the flowers alone. Which is good because we've not given them a long enough season to develop fruit. Sigh. But hey, flowers... pretty.

Most promising yet disappointing tool you've ever used? Maybe one for #MakersHour? I've never used a leaf vac/blower before. So when I got access to the electric one my landlord has I was thinking: this is going to take our #allotment leaf mould game to the NEXT LEVEL. How wrong was I! Most useless bit of junk. We have some pretty "normal" sized leaves here I reckon... but they just clog up the mouth of this thing so I spend more time force-feeding leaves down its gullet than speedily collecting leaves. It couldn't even fill its own bag in half an hour. Turned out the petrol mower is much more effective at collecting leaves, aside from getting into the corners. I think mower + leaf-rake will be the killer combo. Then I get nice buckets of shredded leaf for the leaf-mould darleks. It's a pity the vac doesn't live up to expectations. Maybe there are better ones, this one is just cheap junk? Also: don't even bother asking about the "blower" function... what is the point of that even?

It's not the #allotment that needs to be shut down to overwinter, but sometimes it is the allotmenter... not feeling the motivation for it lately. But we need to go harvest what we can of tomatoes and chillies really. And ponder clearing all that out soon I guess, try and get some winter tunnel/greenhouse bits in. I wish my overwinter leaf crop seedlings had been started earlier though, they're still too puny really. Maybe another coffee first... BST->UTC seems to have given me a headache. And it is too cold. (13.4C in the bedroom right now, I am just being a wimp.)