7 Comments

I didn't grow tomatoes this year except for one plant which was given to me by my neighbours. Instead I grew loads of beautiful chillies called "Habanero " which are very hot. I was surprised by their amazing growth, considering I just did the normal routine of watering and supporting... By the way, in my profile it should read "tiny tiny greenhouse " not Tina....will try your fantastic recipe . How can I add a photo of my chillies??

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This chilli jam sounds fabulous. I also grew tigerella and marmonde. My crop was successful for the first time in years, no thanks to me. I was away a lot.

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Thanks for sharing your experience, Deb. At the end of the day, these plants’ one purpose in life is to produce fruit and spread their seed - maybe we shouldn’t be so arrogant as to assume they need that much of our help to do so!

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Omg this is such a good idea!!! I have been laughing this summer at how everyone talks about tomatoes like they’re precious babies bc I did the same thing, just let them grow wild and get watered solely by the rain, and they exploded. I also had a tomato seedling sprout out the side of my compost pile and it’s now fully grown and making tomatoes and I literally did not touch it at all!

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A self-seeded/volunteer tomato - the dream! I actually had one of these too, emerging from the old compost in a half forgotten frost-cracked pot on the shady side of the patio. It only provided three tomatoes, mind you, but I’m not complaining. I’m starting to notice a real correlation between neglect and success, whereas the more attention I invest in a plant, the more likely it is to die.

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I am such a huge chilli fan! Next year I might experiment with a few different varieties as I’m yet to find one that is the perfect combination of flavour and (the right amount of) heat. The Chenzo ones I grew this year are very tasty but potentially a bit too hot. Maybe I’ll try Habanero next time around.

As for the photos, I’m not sure you can post them here annoyingly! I believe the Substack app has a chat function (which I haven’t experimented with yet). You might be able to share on there. Otherwise you can hit reply to the Earthworm email in your inbox and send me a photo that way, but it won’t reach the entire Earthworm community, sadly. Something to feed back to Substack I think!

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Congrats on your gorgeous tomatoes Dan! Enjoy!

We were off to a good start but ours got blight and we had to pull them all out and will need to rest the land from tomatoes for 3 years! 😢 They’re always disappointing in Sweden tbh so I’m doubling down on tomatillos.

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