Clair's Vegetable Garden Surrey Blog

Clair's Vegetable Garden Surrey Blog My allotment garden blog.

11/06/2026

I can’t believe how much better I’ve done with my tomato plants this year, I really hope we will get a good harvest.

Loving the strawberries this year. I got new plants last year and created a new strawberry bed and they are really comin...
11/06/2026

Loving the strawberries this year. I got new plants last year and created a new strawberry bed and they are really coming into their own! Now it’s wet though, a few have been claimed by the slugs, but thankfully there’s more good ones there than I can keep up with! What do you do with your strawberries? I’m thinking I may have to freeze some. I would make jam, but I don’t really seem to eat much jam these days. At the moment I have a bowl of fresh strawberries on the kitchen table, I’m hoping by having them on display it will encourage everyone in the family to eat some! I can’t seem to buy organic strawberries at the supermarket so homegrown must be best! I wonder how long I will be picking strawberries for, I hope they don’t all come at once! 🤞

First photo Hungarian Hot wax from Red Dragon SeedsSecond photo the roots are looking good on my chillies I’m planting o...
10/06/2026

First photo Hungarian Hot wax from Red Dragon Seeds

Second photo the roots are looking good on my chillies I’m planting out

Third photo The aubergines, chillies and sweet peppers are all planted out

A little chilli update on my chillies sown in February. All these plants are grown from seeds I bought from Red Dragon S...
21/05/2026

A little chilli update on my chillies sown in February. All these plants are grown from seeds I bought from Red Dragon Seeds.

Hungarian Hot Wax, medium hot, 5,000- 15,000 SHU, peppers start pale yellow-green & gradually ripen to bright yellow or golden.

Hungarian Black, quite mild, 4,000 - 10,000 SHU, pods start green and turn deep black and finally a deep glossy red when fully ripe.

Naga Smooky Rainbow, 100,000 - 350,000 (sounds quite hot to me), the peppers start nearly black maturing to a vibrant red with purple/black spots and streaks.

Orange Cayenne, 30,000 - 50,000 SHU these will start green and ripen to orange.

I’m also growing red cayenne chillies which I’ve grown before and I love using in my cooking.

I also have 3 chillies that germinated from the free surprise variety seed packet that was a free gift when I bought the seeds from Red Dragon Seeds so I’m curious to know what I’ll get. These plants are much smaller than the others and seem slower to grow, I wonder if that means they’ll be really hot chillies? 🤔

I’ve been taking off any flowers that have appeared so far, to promote stronger growth and to develop the plants more, but now I’m going to just let them do their thing! 🤞

Tomato Tuesday and it is on! (And I may have got carried away!🙈😅)I had planned to sow my tomato seeds on 15th March but ...
24/03/2026

Tomato Tuesday and it is on! (And I may have got carried away!🙈😅)

I had planned to sow my tomato seeds on 15th March but all best laid plans can go awry and life just got in the way! I started sowing yesterday and today sowed the rest!

I am conducting an experiment. In 2025 I saved some seeds for the first time so I’ve sown some saved seeds and some originals of the same variety to do a little compare. 🧐

I promised myself I wouldn’t sow too many seeds but I have of course gone overboard. Well, there were all those cute little sowing trays so I had to fill them all. Plus I am hoping to have extras to share with my daughter’s school allotment club as I am keen share the joy of growing heirloom tomatoes with teenagers!

Dare I tell you how many I’ve sown? Well there are 26 different varieties. I am hoping to plant out at least 2 of each, but I’ve sown way more!

I sowed most of what I had of the Crimson varieties as these didn’t really germinate last year and I also had some sow by 2024 moneymaker seeds so I thought I might as well sow them, but don’t expect anything.

So ignoring the 32 seeds that I don’t think will germinate I have sown 136. Well, you always have to throw in a few extra for luck in case some don’t germinate! 😅

I’ve used John Innes seed sowing compost.

If anyone is interested, here are the varieties I’ve sown, a mixture of heirloom and F1 varieties:

Chupa Chups
Dirty Curty
Sart Roloise
Cosmic Burst
Molten Lava
Alice’s Dream
Eight ball
Burmese Sour
Tigerella
Black Crimea
Green Zebra
Marmande
Black Cherry
Orange Cherry
Oxheart
Orange Queen
Roma
Saint Pierre
Balkonzauber
San Marzano
Crimson Cocktail
Crimson Cherry
Crimson Crush
Moneymaker

Plus some saved seeds from the orange and the red cherry tomatoes that randomly grew in the garden of the house my husband was working on last year that tasted amazing!

04/12/2025

These are the chillies I grew this year. My chillies are grown outdoors as I have no greenhouse or a poly tunnel. I find that Cayenne Chillies grow really well outdoors and they always produce a harvest for me no matter what the weather is. I have grown two plants in pots as well that I could bring indoors when the nights got colder and then I hope to overwinter them.

Purple carrots I grew in my vegetable garden! I just love these ones amazing colour of these and the fact that I can be ...
12/10/2025

Purple carrots I grew in my vegetable garden! I just love these ones amazing colour of these and the fact that I can be pulling them up and then eating them with 5 minutes as I gre them in my garden!

The tomatoes keep on coming! 😍
22/09/2025

The tomatoes keep on coming! 😍

I’ve got peppers on my overwintered pepper plants! 😍
29/06/2025

I’ve got peppers on my overwintered pepper plants! 😍

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