First crop of chillies

I started clearing out an area of our back yard some weeks ago to make way for herbs, veggies and what not. At the time I basically chucked a handful of chilli plant seeds down in one area with no expectation that any would survive.

Since then they've gone nuts. A fairly substantial set of plants in one bushy clump. And a few days ago I went out and removed a pile of them for drying. They're currently hanging up in our kitchen via a piece of string:

On other herb and veggie based news, we may have a crop of spring onions, radishes, tomatoes, basil, rosemary, thyme and what not fairly soon. The area I've got to work with is kinda small, but I've had to do some major earthworks to remove the jungle that was there. Here's a photo of the currently 'active' area:

Kinda looks very small in this photo, but in reality it's bigger than it looks. The area to the left of the photo is about twice the size but completely bare at present. It wasn't at first and had quite a few large (no sh*t 3" across), hairy eight legged friends that were exceedingly displeased at my disturbing their hunting grounds. Frickin' 'ell they can run fast!

I now have to dig the soil up and extract the last vestiges of a weird almost alien looking plant that had root tentacles stretching out over a 6' area. Once I've done that I have to condition the soil and build it up. After that, I can put carrots and corn in it.


Sadly I put my back and hip out working on it this weekend. Not getting any younger. Rats.