Growing chillies in New Zealand

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FarmAway

Greetings from Middle Earth

I'm a Canadian Brit of Italian heritage who has now been living in New Zealand for 8 years. Last year my husband, 3 wee boys and I moved to an 11-acre farm about 30 minutes drive north west of Christchurch city. We haven't given up our day jobs (I work from home as a business writer), but my plan is to grow chillies (and some other stuff) and sell pickled chillies, chilli pickled onions and chipotles.

We've invested the tax refund on the purchase of the farm in a 48-metre long, 5 metre wide tunnel house (poly tunnel) to grow the chillies. I'm also growing lemon grass, basil, and I've got a few cucumbers in there at the moment to sell at the farm gate. Next year I want to grow some cape gooseberries too.

We are in autumn now and it's starting to get chilly under the kilt. I transplanted my chilli seedlings late (in January, which is mid-summer) because it took my husband a while to put up the tunnel house. They've done really well, though I need to sort out pest control next year. We have flies, moths, ladybirds, white butterflies, and spiders with Very Long Legs who guard my chilli plants and hopefully eat the chewing bugs. The only pest control I've used so far is derris dust around of the base of my transplanted seedlings after I lost a few to cut worms.

This year I've grown Santiagos (a form of jalapeno), early jalapeno, long thin cayenne and serranos. I tried to germinate some golden cayenne, but had no luck.

I found the best way to germinate the seeds is to plant them in seedling trays, cover with glad wrap (plastic film) and put them in the airing cupboard for 7 days. After that, I've moved them to the light in a mini-greenhouse and then transplanted them into the soil. I plant through weedmat in the tunnel house, and then surround the seedling with a mulch made of hay, grass clippings, powdered cow poo, and effective micro-organisms (I fermented this mix for 10 days before using it). I occasionally water with the diluted 'soup' I made of washed seaweed from the beach left to 'brew' in a bucket of water for a few weeks. Other than that, I haven't used any fertlisers, but they've done well with lots of fruit.

I'm still waiting for the chillies to turn red (I have one cayenne that is now orange) and hope it's not too late because it's mid-autumn now and we only get about 11 hours of daylight, with quite a few cloudy days. Some of them are starting to go that deep purple that preceeds the red, so hopefully not too long.

I think this is a fantastic site - I'm looking forward to experimenting with the sauces. I've tried four times to make a sweet chilli sauce, but nothing quite hits the spot yet.

The tunnel house is only a quarter full this year as I'm still experimenting, but I hope to have a full house next year - the hay will be moving to a hay barn next year. In December, we will send our four 2-year-old cattle to be converted to meat and I'd love to make some decent jerky. The only jerky I can find here is rubbery - nothing like the beautiful smoked elk jerky that my mother used to make in Canada.

I'll post some pics now...

The tunnel house from the outside


The tunnel house from the inside


A close-up of my chilli forest
 
FarmAway said:
Greetings from Middle Earth
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Welcome from the sand hills of South Carolina!


I'm still waiting for the chillies to turn red (I have one cayenne that is now orange) and hope it's not too late because it's mid-autumn now and we only get about 11 hours of daylight, with quite a few cloudy days. Some of them are starting to go that deep purple that proceeds the red, so hopefully not too long.
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I keep my plants going well into the fall around here; with a little luck, I sometimes have fresh ripe peppers for Christmas. They're not as large as the late summer peppers, but they will still ripen during those short days. It's the cold weather that does the most damage. I think that eleven hours of sunlight is plenty for your peppers to ripen.
 
Thanks for the warm welcome everyone,

I'm not sure about the pics, they work on one of my computers but not on the other, so I'll post links for anyone who can't already see them.

I have one red cayenne now and one two-tone (it's quite funky), so it looks like I'll get more ripening before the darkest days arrive. Our shortest day here is your longest - 21 June.

Our nearest town is Rangiora - the home town of several All Blacks and just a few mullets. As well as a lot of cattle and sheep.

It's funny to think we're picking chillies just as you're planting (except for the Ozzie members who are in the same hemisphere as us). We get hot summers (30C highs) and cold winters (-6C lows), so it'll be interesting to see if our chillies survive the winter in the tunnel house without any supplementary heating.

My seed supplier has only about 20 different varieties of hot peppers, but importing is probably a pain because NZ is so hot on biosecurity. There are several pests that the rest of the world has but not us.

The market for chillies here is still in its infancy - they say that NZ is 20 years behind the rest of the world in many ways and that includes culinary tastes.

I lived in Toronto for the first 7 years of my life then moved to the UK for 21 years, and have since stayed with family in BC (Cranbrook and the coast) for the odd few months here and there.

New photo host, hope this works:

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And here's our 'grow your own' beef jerky. Our girls are the three in the foreground, the others belong to our large, neighbouring dairy farm.
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excellent pics Louisa - your polytunnel has made me so jealous. I wish I had the space for one of those. I'm in Sydney so I'd be interested to see if the tunnel overwinters your plants without additional heating - hope so!

being a jerky maker myself I love the look of your jerky farm. anytime you want to talk jerky give drop me a line, though I've never made elk jerky, only beef (whole meat and ground). it's always good to meet another Southern Hemispherean on site.

again, welcome to THP and thanks for posting the pics.

Mark
 
It's a cold, rainy day in paradise here, a bit warmer in the tunnelhouse.

Chilliman, you're just over the ditch! Though we're a far way further south of the equator than you are, so if the chillies can survive our winter in the tunnelhouse, they should do OK in one of those mini-greenhouses in Sydney. We don't have too much snow, just once a year usually and not deep (other than last year when we had a big dump and lost power for a few days).

I'm a bit of a jerky novice, tried a couple of recipes and I have a deydrator, but the last couple of batches were a bit greasy. I used corned silverside beef which is really cheap over here, so I'm waiting until we have surplus beef when the cattle have been 'done'.

I know it's a bit 'out there' to grow your own meat, but I figure that the meat we buy was someone's cow/pig/lamb. And I know with our animals that they have been well looked after, with lots of good grazing and treated kindly. And when it comes to the end bit, they are home killed (by a licensed professional), so that they don't suffer the stress of being loaded onto a truck, driven miles away, stuffed in yards with hundreds of other cattle and killed on a 'conveyor belt'. We had our pigs home killed several weeks ago and they had no concept. One minute they were happily munching their breakfast and the next they were gone. And now we have a freezer full of bacon and sausages - from free range, well treated, happy pigs.

Talking of the animals, the cattle escaped into my tunnelhouse paddock and they've chewed several holes in the plastic... they stuck their head through and uprooted two chilli plants, so I've picked off the chillies and will pickle them this weekend as there's about 50 chillies. I always use cider vinegar to pickle, it's my favourite for flavour.

Anyway, that's it for now from the deep, dark south.

Louisa
 
There's a big hoo-hah at the moment because the NZ government is proposing a 'Fart Tax' for cattle farmers because of all the methane that comes out of their bottoms!

Hmm Boags - there's not a day I don't wake up and feel I'm so lucky, lucky, lucky! Land prices are still low-ish here in Godzone. We're 16km from the outskirts of Christchurch - NZ's third largest city - and 35km from the city centre, and our 11 acres of land (without buildings) is valued at NZ$200,000 - that's about 66,000 of your Great British pounds.

In chilli-related news, some are starting to turn red - and yellow! A couple of the golden cayennes I thought I'd baked to death must have survived, lots of thick, long chillies that turn from pale green to lemon yellow.

I'm going to spend this weekend pickling chillies and chilli pickled onions to sell at the gate.
 
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