I lovingly sowed my chilli seeds in two trays. I am rather fond of chillis, as I am fascinated by the huge variety of shapes, sizes and colours they choose to grow in. They come in very handy in winter to give extra warmth and interest to comforting meals. This Christmas for the first time I pickled some in kilner jars as presents. I decorated the lids with spicey coloured Liberty lawn, and they went down very well.
I planned the sowing so that the seeds would be just germinating when I returned form skiing, and it was such a surprise to see them all glowing healthily under their tray lids. Then a couple of days later it was like they had been hit by a pox. Healthy young leaves all nibbled along the edges. I wracked my brains about what could have caused this; was it baby slugs, or mice? There was no sign of slugs hiding anywhere around the trays, and I suspected that both creatures wouldn't just daintily nibble the very edges of seed leaves, but gobble the whole plant entirely. I put organic slug pellets down, but there were no takers.
Then I realized how similar the damage was to the damage on my broad bean leaves one summer. It was some kind of weevil, almost definitely. The pea and bean weevils lie unnoticed in the soil until they hatch, and crawl up the stems of plants to eat their leaves, and when they are finished they crawl back into the soil again to mutate.
When the weather became kinder I bought some fresh soil, and transplanted the least damaged of the little seedlings into it. I was very careful to wash the old soil off their roots as much as I could. They do look in a sorry state though, and I don't know how healthy the muture plants will be. I'm going to have to sow another batch.
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