Chillies

I finally gave up and ditched the remaining three spare Red Demon chilli seedlings, which were tiny, wizened and pallid -- the last straw was when I discovered some kind of insect larvae wriggling around in the pot, which may or may not have been related to their total failure to thrive :-( They had not only not grown properly, but their leaves had gone almost white. The single 'adult' seedling has now made quite a nice bushy little plant by comparison... it's just that it's still only the height of my thumb!

I still have two dark-leaf chilli seedlings in the mini-greenhouse, having discarded the other seedling some time ago likewise; the older of the two is dark-leaved and about the same size as the Demon Red, although without the side-shoots, and the other one is more green than dark.

I also have my first mesembryanthemum, about ten days later than last year. (I note that the Demon Red chillies were reported as being still only a couple of inches high on June 6th last year, and four inches high on July 11th, before reaching 8-9 inches at the start of August and a triumphant twelve inches and fruiting by August 17th...)

Planting record

Planted more coriander (to replace the seed that totally failed) and pink Swan River daisy, since all the plants mysteriously wilted simultaneously. Also planted more poppy seed from some long seed-cases that I found -- probably Papaver dubium, which is boringly almost identical to the common field poppy apart from the shape of its seedheads :-p

My garlic had died down, so I pulled up the bulbs -- but although the original cloves *have* bulbed up, they haven't subdivided into fresh cloves, which is a common problem when you try to grow your own. Apparently caused by the plants not having overwintered!

It is looking very much as if the successful 'rocket' seedlings were in fact the pak choi, and that it was the rocket that failed entirely ;-p (In my defence, the seed leaves of the two species really are bizarrely similar -- or perhaps not so bizarre, when you consider that both are, in fact, varieties of cabbage!)
To be honest I'd rather have it that way round :-)

Smart meters

The Government wants everybody to have a 'smart meter' installed on their electricity supply, claiming that it will save the population vast amounts of money.

We had a smart meter fitted years ago, and it was pretty much useless from that point of view; when we changed supplier it stopped working, and there didn't seem any point in doing anything about it since it wasn't giving any information to speak of. The only thing it showed was that when you used electricity to heat up water, power consumption shot through the roof (boiling a kettle or heating the washing machine water), and since heating things using electricity is basically achieved by massively inefficient transmission (which is why an incandescent bulb, which works by heating the element until it glows, uses so much more power than LED lighting) that was not exactly news. ( Read more... )