Earlier in the year Binty decided to grow some chillies, not because the Binty household like spicy things, but because Mr P-J does. So, once they were ready to come out of the greenhouse we inherited six little chilli plants. Well, 5 and a half as one is a bit dodgy…
These little plants have been living in the kitchen, happily growing away, flowering, and doing what comes naturally to them. They’ve even produced little chillies which reminded me of the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary…you know, that legendary sheep-growing plant…
For those that don’t know of this fantastical creature/plant, I’ll elaborate a bit. In the Middle Ages, it was believed that there was a type of plant in the region of Tartary that grew lambs. The lambs were attached to a stalk by their stomach, the stalk was flexible enough to let them graze around the plant, but once the grazing was gone the lamb would die. Well, it turns out that the plant was actually a Cibotium Barometz, also known as a chicken fern, or woolly fern. A little bit of an anti-climax, really! (No offence to the fern) If our chillies start sprouting lambs, I’ll post about it. On the subject of which, the rams went in a week ago…