Harvesting chillis

There are few things that gladden my eye more than a basket full of ripe chillis!

The dry, warm weather in the early half of this month has brought the chillis on a lot, and their fruits are now reaching maturity. This year maturity equates to turning red. I like chillis in all shapes, sizes and colours, but for me the most attractive ones are red. I'm not sure why. I feel the same about tomatoes. I know it sounds old-fashioned, but I also like carrots to be orange, and beetroot to be purple too!

In my basket this time I have chillis of five different varieties. The very big ones are "Ohnivec";

The little tiny ones are "Demon Red";

The small deep red ones with black calyxes are "Nosferatu";

The two fattish, fairly straight ones are "Ring of Fire";

And the two in the middle (one round, one long and curved) are "Piment d'Espelette".

The round one is a real aberration, probably caused by the compost issues I had. Piment d'Espelette is supposed to be long and fairly straight! Anyway, it looks good, doesn't it? If you didn't know what it was you might say it was a "Cherry Bomb" or something similar.

This year I have only one chilli that will not be red when mature, and this is "Aji Limon", which will hopefully be yellow. No sign of that yet though.

The immature fruits of "Explosive Embers" are purple, but even they turn red when they ripen, passing through a number of other colours en route.

And of course the "Nosferatu" chillis are a lovely deep purple-ey black when they are immature.

Several of the "Red Habaneros" are at the half-way stage at present:

Today though, the chillis I have picked are definitely RED!