Around a month ago  a big Air-Pot container of carrots sown in January was opened up; the perfect roots weighed in at 3kg. Sowing in a container is a good way to produce a clean crop of early carrots as  carrot root flies skim the soil surface and do not find carrots raised up in a big pot. The same pot was immediately sown with another crop of carrots and should yield a late crop. At both ends of the year it is easy to tie a clear polythene cover over the pot creating a mini-greenhouse and extending the active growing season. The 25cm depth of soil in the Extra Large Air-Pot give plenty of space for developing roots.

Chillies are beginning to ripen and I made a batch of Thai style sweet dipping sauce; mainly using the Jamaican Red Hot chillies which have produced lots of their distinctive mushroom shaped pods, even in a tiny 1 litre Air-Pot ‘prop’ pot. I also included some very early ripening Yellow Piripiri. The dipping sauce used 800g windfall apples (cores and pips included) boiled for an hour in 1 litre of water and strained through a jelly bag overnight to yield 500ml liquor. This high pectin liquid will thicken up 1 kg sugar to a good dipping sauce consistency, when heated to jam setting temperature. Before heating with the sugar I added about 200g chillies to the apple liquid in a pan together with a couple of tablespoons each of soy sauce, fish sauce, vinegar, lemon juice plus a few shallots, garlic and ginger.