These pretty, fiery little plants will thrive on your windowsill – and add plenty of heat to your cooking
It’s time to start sowing possibly my favourite of all home-grown crops: chillies. Since I moved to the UK 20 years ago, the meteoric rise of this veg has astounded me. Once considered verging on inedible by most of my mates, these days the very same people are now going to chilli festivals each summer to hunt down the weirdest and most wonderful cultivars that have made it here from all over the Americas. There is even a booming collection of indie UK farming start-ups now growing hundreds of varieties to meet this demand. Many at pretty eye-watering prices.
But the UK isn’t great for chilli-growing, at least outdoors. Our summers just don’t have enough heat to fuel the growth of most chilli cultivars, which hail from the tropical warm of South America. Plus, if it is maximum fire-power you are after from your crop, growing them in our climate may further disappoint you as capsaicin, the spicy chemical in chilies, is produced in response to heat. The warmer the temperatures they bask in, the more fiery they will be.
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