Photographs of this planting through the 2026 season, oldest first.
The photographs
Week of 1 JuneA Piri Piri pepper from straight overhead on 6 June, leaves whorled around the stem tip and rippling along every untoothed margin, pale yellow-green blotches creeping out from the midribs and the newest growth still cupped and crumpled, in flat overcast light.Week of 15 JuneA Piri Piri pepper on 19 June, forked into several shoots from a low crown with its leaves spread flat over the soil and a tight cluster of three to five pale greenish buds sitting in each of two forks, one leaf tip blackened, in bright angled daylight.Week of 22 JuneA Piri Piri on 23 June carrying buds and no fruit at all, one round green bud standing upright in every stem fork with papery tan spent corollas hanging beside them, and rain still sitting whole and domed on the leaves.Week of 22 JuneA Piri Piri open on 24 June, one flower spread into a flat cream star around its short cone of anthers with two more nodding beside it, under a brilliant clear sky, a dark timber outbuilding and its glazed ridge cupola beyond the drive.Week of 13 JulyPiri Piri chilies on 16 July, five or six slender green pods borne singly at the nodes and held out sideways or slightly upward rather than hanging, one hooked near the tip, dusted with kaolin clay in soft low evening light with woodland behind.Week of 20 JulyA Piri Piri pepper on 21 July, its clearest fruit squatter than it is long with a shallow navel inside a raised rim, and over the older leaves below it dried kaolin graying them out, with fresh clear droplets standing on top of the clay.Week of 20 JulyPiri Piri peppers on 21 July, two long slender fruits held out almost level rather than hanging, pale yellow-green against much darker leaves, and those leaves below stippled gray by a dried spray, several gone papery tan along the margins.Week of 27 JulyA Piri Piri chili on 28 July, chartreuse and glossy, hooked round a slight waist with a dimple in its blunt tip, under a July dusting of kaolin clay that has left one leaf above it whitened almost to variegation, in low warm sun from the right.Week of 3 AugustA Piri Piri chili on 5 August in flower and fruit at once, a dozen white five-lobed stars nodding face-down through the canopy and every pod still fully green with no break of color, the whole bush wet under flat gray overcast.Week of 3 AugustA Piri Piri chili on 6 August, one ripe fruit standing erect against a leaf on a short stout stalk, dull deep crimson and scuffed with pale silvery corky streaks down one side, the immature pods around it much longer and thinner in green.Week of 10 AugustA Piri Piri plant on 15 August, flowering and cropping at once — nodding white stars among fifteen slim green chilies, the longest outreaching the leaf blades beside them, and one gone comma-curved scarlet in low evening sun.Week of 17 AugustTwo Piri Piri chilies on 22 August standing upright side by side, the ripe one glossy scarlet and longer than any leaf in the frame, its tip rounded rather than pointed, the other still green and curved, swelling at the middle before it blunts.Week of 24 AugustA Piri Piri chili on 26 August gone smooth glossy scarlet among several still slender and green on the same plant, blunt at the tip rather than pointed, in a gray planter with the gravel drive and a pale rail fence running away beyond it.Week of 31 AugustPiri Piri chilies on 31 August, small and slender and held upright pointing outward instead of hanging, four of them ripened bright scarlet to fine points and the rest still green, with a dark shed and its hung lantern beyond.
