The natural Navigation: The Right Course, Naturally

There is no better way to get a feel for botany than to grow something from seed. By the time a plant is even a few feet high it is displaying such a myriad of often complex developments that unweaving them can be fiendishly difficult. Watching a plant grow from day one it is much easier to spot these developments taking place. Nothing could be more satisfying than watching a fruit ripen towards the end of this process.

This Santa Fe Grande Chilli has ripened more quickly on its warmer, southern side. Another instance where my chilli plants have done their best to turn themselves into a natural compass.

Trees are the easiest plants to read to find direction, but one of my chilli plants is also doing a fine job. It has been growing in a greenhouse and so shows only the effects of the sun and no combing from the wind. It could not be much clearer.

The plant is dramatically heavier on its southern side and it is also displaying the ‘Tick Effect’ across its stems – more vertical growth on the northern side, more horizontal on the southern.

Taking a short break from final edits and unsubtle plugs for my book… I ventured into the garden. Something moved where there should have been no movement. My eyes focused through a wire fence to our algae and moss peppered greenhouse. The chickens were up to something. They had somehow (they have clipped wings, a mystery) got up onto the shelf where I was in the final stages of drying this season’s chilli crop on the vine and, well, gone mental. Clearly enraged that they were not able to eat the chillis themselves, they had ransacked the place, overturned the pots and then stumbled across my beautiful little citrus and kiwi plants. My lemons, oranges, kiwis and passion fruit saplings, all grown from supermarket-bought fruit seeds. Planted with my son in the kitchen in spring. The little ******* had stripped all the ones they could reach bare. They cannot…

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The Gooley family spent Saturday in the lovely surroundings of West Dean enjoying their annual Chilli Fiesta. It was both an enjoyable and serendipitous occasion.

My gardening skills are usually limited to lawnmowing and leaving a small wake of destruction with a strimmer. About the only area where I have had any success with bringing new lives into the garden rather than violently curtailing old ones is in growing chillis. I have ten different varieties grown from seed and although not all bearing fruit, yet, they are all notably alive.

The West Dean Chilli Fiesta is a bit of Mecca to amateur growers like myself so it is a rather bizarre coincidence that West Dean is also where my courses in October are being held. Something I mulled over as the August rain ran off my nose and my mouth burned with a rather excellent jalapeno and papaya sauce.