Project Eden - one year

It has been a year since the last post for Project Eden. Many things have happened in the one year. I will keep it short and leave you guys with all the exciting updates...

Throughout last year summer, the chili plants produced so many chilies that I could not finish by myself. It was like 4-5 ready-to-eat every day! I ended up giving the surplus to my colleagues. Words spread through the office, and I was known as "chili" man in the office.


Well, good thing never lasts. Remember the "growing" concern from the management? It seems that chili planting is not something that an IT guy should do in the office, and they claimed that the chili plants attracted some flies to the office vicinity. I did not spot any, but the management claimed they had. Probably the fly looks like this:


or this:


I guess it was latter that sealed the fate of the chili plants: Public urination does not exactly fit with the company's image :) and the plants had to go... It was heart wreaking moment, giving all my plants away to people as I did not have any place to keep them. Basically, 4-5 months of growing was down the drain.

Anyway, I managed to moved the remaining to my colleague's place. He has an abandoned green house in the backyard. It sounded ideal initially, but it was lack of sunlight that those plants need. Well, I guess it was better than leaving them in the trash.

Since then, the plants were not doing very good in the new environment. They were not bearing the same amount of fruits as before. When autumn came, all plants were almost dead. It worsen when we got one of the coldest winter in UK last year. These were the last crop of the chili in late summer:


At this point, you might think that I probably gave up on the chili growing idea. I would have if I was alone, but this time I have several "partners" in crime :) I guess I got them hooked with the chili that they could not live without it (the bad quality office canteen food might help the cause; chili just makes it better). This time, we come prepared... and the management will not know what is coming :)