A polytunnel gives one a certain advantage in that you can get things going a little earlier within it than those planted outside but there are limits, unless you want to go to the bother of heating it. There comes a time when it’s cold enough to have a frost inside the polytunnel. Our last tomatoes have long since been brought inside and eaten or preserved but, alongside our winter salads (such as Green in Snow, Mizuna, Ragged Jack and some rocket and lettuce still hanging on gamely) we had one summer crop yet to harvest, our chilli plants.
Then we had a hard frost. If you’ve ever left a pepper in the very bottom of the fridge or in contact with the cooling element at the back, you’ll know that mushy squeeze that tells you it’s for the compost bin. The freezing, expanding ice crystals do for the structure and there’s no way back. One forgotten pepper in the fridge is one thing, but half a dozen plants that should have been stripped the day before is more than disappointing.
Was it a greenhouse full of ruined peppers that made Thomas Jefferson expound, “Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today” ? All was not lost, however, and we raided books and Googled around the world of chilli preservation to find ways of rescuing our soggy hot harvest. Here’s what we did :
- Chilli chutney
- Sweet red chilli jelly
- Sweet green chilli jelly
- Sweet yellow jilli chelly
- Green chilli oil
- Dried (in a warm oven) chillies.
Gabrielle’s complaint is that all that un-gloved preparation left her hands red and burning and had her soaking them in lemon juice, then yoghurt in an effort to provide pain relief. This is no joke, when handling large amounts of chillies, latex surgical gloves are essential.
