Chillis and tomatoes

A few weeks ago I visited the nursery of Sea Spring Seeds in Dorset. Before I launch into my visit, a bit of background for those readers who are not familiar with Sea Spring Seeds. The small nursery is located beside Dorset’s Jurassic Coast, just along from Chesil Beach, in a stunning position with a view of the sea, so the site is mild but windy.

Here Joy and Michael Michaud produce seed for nearly 100 chilli and sweet pepper varieties, as well as tomatoes and other veg. If you have visited RHS Hampton Court, you may have seen their trade stand and plant display in the allotment area (see below).

The small and immaculate site has a number of polytunnels and many small greenhouses for seed production. You are immediately struck by the lack of flowers on the site – no pollinator flowers here. Why? Because they don’t want to encourage bumble bees, in particular, that may cross pollinate their peppers! And as you would expect from a couple of scientists everything is labelled and recorded.

Joy and Michael have produced a number of new varieties of chillis, most notably the Dorset Naga, once the hottest chilli in the world, but there are plenty of other varieties that they have developed – Fairy Lights, Sparkler, Joker and more – and as Joy explained, the sales success of a new variety depends on its name which has to be carefully considered.

Variety evaluation

One of the key elements behind the success of their seed business is the fact that they trial everything before selling. Every variety is evaluated for its suitability for growing in a garden or allotment. And that is so important. We were all impressed by the chilli and tomato trials, so how was this achieved?

Firstly, there’s no fancy fertilizers here, simply Miracle Gro which is readily available to the gardener. And interestingly, Joy doesn’t bother with a potash-based tomato fertiliser either – they all get the same weekly dose of a general purpose nitrogen-based fertiliser. Why? Joy believes that you need healthy leaves for a good crop. And I can’t argue with that given the fact that their plants looked healthy, and were laden with fruits

Tomato tasting

And on to tasting. The trials include varieties new to Joy and Michael alongside some of their regular varieties that they haven’t tested for a while and may be not selling as well as they should. All varieties, of course, are described as tasty otherwise they would never sell. But so many of the new varieties in this trial tasted bland and a few could only be described as horrible!!! So its reassuring to know that nothing goes onto the Sea Spring list without passing the taste test.

We looked at the blight trial too (first image in gallery) . They grow Red Alert which is susceptible to late blight as their control. Some varieties had already succumbed while others were unaffected. But remember, blight is an evolving disease, it changes overtime, so blight resistant varieties may not be so resistant in the future. (See recommended varieties below.)

I also liked the way Joy had trained Sunbelle horizontally to make best use of the small greenhouse.

To read my 5 take away recommendations and tips, read my full article on Substack

Visit Sea Springs website and look out for the guided tours next August,