ChilliMango

Author: divydovy

  • Batches #002+, in progress

    Batches #002+, in progress

    Six years after Tom’s sauce, four years after moving to Portugal, one very involved hydroponic build later, this year I’m making batches using onlly chillies grown in the garden. No market-bought chillies, no online mash. Every mg of capsaicin in these products will come off the towers myself. And there’s a lot of chillis, a good basket every week, so I’ll have the chance to experiment more.

    The Batch #002 lineup on a wire rack, from long red Hatch-type pods down to habaneros and Scotch Bonnets

    It’s a grab-bag batch on purpose: whatever’s ripe, chocolate habaneros, red and yellow Scotch Bonnets, Ajis, Big Jims, a mystery self-seeded variety I’m just calling Yellow Black, all going in together along with Algarvian mangoes, garlic, ginger, lemongrass from the terrace, kaffir lime leaves, lime zest, local Algarve honey and white miso, the same backbone as Honey Monster.

    A chocolate habanero ripening among dark leaves
    A chocolate habanero ripening, 13 September.
    A trug of freshly picked chillies: chocolate habaneros, red, yellow and pale green Scotch Bonnets
    Close-up of the same pick: dark chocolate habaneros, Scotch Bonnets and yellow pods
    Sliced chillies and garlic in a steel bowl on kitchen scales reading 1,675 g
    Ginger added on top, scales at 1,838 g
    Sliced red peppers added, scales at 2,176 g
    Mango piled on top, scales at 3,651 g
    Lime and mango in the bowl, scales at 3,917 g
    The packed fermentation jar: mango, chillies and kaffir lime leaves under brine

    I’ll be doing a few batches, and am going to experiment with some chilli salt too.

    Join the list for Batch #002

  • Why ChilliMango is a waitlist

    Why ChilliMango is a waitlist

    Honey Monster came and went in a week. Ten jars, to friends. People asked when there’d be more, and the honest answer is: there won’t be. Not that Honey Monster, anyway.

    That’s how this works. One batch at a time, each one named, each one with its own label, and when it’s gone the next one is something different. It depends on what the garden gives me that season and what I’m in the mood to make.

    So instead of a shop full of “add to cart” buttons, there’s a list. Leave your email on the thing you want, and I’ll write once, when it’s ready. Batch #002 is fermenting now. The chilli salt is close.

    Join the list for Batch #002

  • First Harvest

    First Harvest

    First harvest off the towers, the point where five months of building finally turned into chillies in a bowl. Bird’s eye and Thai types, cayennes, Scotch Bonnets just starting to turn, Poblanos still dark green on the vine and not ready yet. Snapped a branch of the habaneros off accidentally so they’re still too green.

    First harvest on a wooden board: green Scotch Bonnets, a pile of small red bird's eye chillies, long red cayennes, pale yellow pods and two dark green Poblanos
    The first harvest, 23 August 2026.

    Some plants were loaded, others barely producing anything, which turned out to be normal, mixed varieties in different tower positions establish at different rates. The season runs through November, so the slow ones should have time to catch up.

    Two long pale green pods hanging on the plant
    Still on the plant, 23 August.
    A dark green Poblano on the plant
    A Poblano, still dark green.

    This was the harvest that mattered most, not because it was the biggest (it wasn’t, by a long way), but because it was the first real reward after months of grind.

  • Flowers First

    Flowers First

    By August the towers were a wall of leaves and flowers. Purple flowers on one plant, white on the rest, and clusters of green Scotch Bonnets hanging underneath.

    The tower frame packed with chilli plants, flowers and leaves, under the carport
    The towers, 6 August.
    A chilli plant with purple flowers and purple pods
    Purple flowers.
    A cluster of green Scotch Bonnet pods
    Scotch Bonnets, still green.
    Small upright green pods and white flowers among leaves
    More on the way.

    Then on 9 August, a handful of red ones. Not a harvest exactly, more a taster. Two weeks later came the first proper one.

    A handful of long red chillies in an open palm
    The first red ones, 9 August.
  • What Almost Killed It

    What Almost Killed It

    Somewhere in the middle of the build, a cable outage took the whole system down. That was the moment it stopped being a fun project and started being something I had to take seriously, because a few hours without power meant real plant losses.

    The fix was a rebuild of the setup around one pump per tower instead of a shared system, plus a UPS to ride out any outage. We tested it properly before an 18-day trip away from home, no hands on the system at all. It held. Every plant survived, heaviest fruiting I’d seen yet when we got back.

    A storage crate holding a battery unit and cables beside the towers
    The improvised UPS and solar setup, July.
    A webcam view looking down into the towers
    The webcam, for keeping an eye on things while I travelled.
    A yellow chilli ripening on a tower plant after 18 days away, garden behind
    Back from 18 days away. Every plant made it.

    Later in the season a pump failed on one of the towers anyway, quietly, days before anyone noticed. Some plants didn’t make it. It was a reminder that hardening a system once doesn’t mean it’s hardened forever, every point of failure needs checking on, not just fixing once.

  • Six Weeks on the Towers

    Six Weeks on the Towers

    The plants went onto the towers at the end of May looking a bit sorry for themselves. Six weeks later you could barely see the pipes.

    Young chilli plants in the net pots of a grey vertical tower inside the carport
    Day one on the towers, 31 May.
    Two towers with young plants growing out of their net pots
    Two weeks in, 12 June.
    The towers covered in dense green chilli plants under the carport roof
    Six weeks in, 12 July.

    Then, on 13 July, the first pods. An orange one hanging off one tower, a little green Scotch Bonnet on another, purple ones a couple of days later.

    A single orange chilli pod hanging under a leaf
    First pod, 13 July.
    A small green Scotch Bonnet among the leaves
    A Scotch Bonnet, still green.
    Small dark purple chilli pods on a plant
    Purple pods, 15 July.

    Nowhere near ripe. But after five months of building, that first orange pod was the moment I believed this might actually work.

  • Building the Towers

    Building the Towers

    The grow started with indoor germination under LED in the living room. I then graduated the plants to an indoor hydroponic NFT system which was super problematic.

    An empty silver-lined grow tent
    The grow tent, January.
    A tray of rockwool seed cubes, each with a coloured variety tag
    Every seedling labelled, January.
    Seedlings in net pots with coloured tags, seen from above
    Seedlings in net pots, March.
    Seedlings in a white NFT board inside the grow tent
    The indoor NFT system, March.
    Young chilli plants with tags filling out in the grow tent
    Filling out indoors, April.

    Eventually they got big enough to be moved into the outdoor vertical towers in a converted car port. Germination through the early months, a system setup in March, then a stretch through April and May of cuttings, pest control pivots, and lots of build pivots. I still haven’t found a solution to mosquitos (turns out a big water reservoir in the Algarve is also a handy mosquito farm) so know that for every tasty bite of spice, I’ve been bitten to get it to you.

    An empty carport in a green field
    The carport, January.
    A freshly dug rectangular pit beside the carport
    Digging the reservoir pit, February.
    The reservoir pit dug deeper in dry ground
    Digging again, May.
    Grey tower pipes with rows of drilled holes
    Tower pipes, drilled.
    A black liner laid in the pit with a hose filling it
    Lining the reservoir, 30 May.
    A timber frame standing over the lined reservoir under the carport
    The frame over the reservoir, 30 May.

    Nothing about it went in a straight line. Power cuts, algal blooms, aphid attacks, more power cuts, EC and pH trial and error, re-learning chemistry, learning a lot about light pollution, and often having a day or two to get the farm turned around between business trips.

    By late May the frames were built and the system was stable enough to stop firefighting daily. It took about five months from “I saw a reel” to towers full of plants that looked like they might actually fruit.

  • Wild Boar

    Wild Boar

    Somewhere between the seedlings and the towers, I put a night camera out in the garden. This is what it caught.

    A wild boar rooting in the garden at night, on an infrared trail camera
    Wild boar on the night camera, May 2026.

    A wild boar, rooting around in the dark. If you grow anything in the hills round here you’ll know the feeling. They can turn over a bed in a night, and I was about to build a big tank of water and a load of tender plants right in their path.

    So the boar became one more thing to design around. Everything ended up inside the carport, behind fencing and netting.

    The carport enclosed with fencing and netting, the frame and reservoir inside
    Netted in, 31 May.
  • Social Media Made Me Build a Chilli Farm

    Social Media Made Me Build a Chilli Farm

    Not long after Honey Monster’s bottles went out the door, somehow homemade “diy vertical hydroponic” got into my Insta algo. On a whim, I decided to build my own.

    This looks fun, cheap, and easy.

    The appeal was obvious: if I could grow my own chillies, every batch after Honey Monster would start in the garden instead of a market stall. I also wanted a project that was not digital. So I started.

    A rendering of a wooden pergola over a raised planter with five white vertical towers
    The original AI render for the farm.

    I’ve grown plants before, including hydroponically. But not this style, not these plants, not on this scale. I underestimated was the cost and the difficulty of the whole thing, by a wide margin.

  • Honey Monster, Batch #001

    Honey Monster, Batch #001

    In January 2026 I made my first fermented batch for other people. I’d tried fermenting once before, a green jalapeño and kiwi sauce in June 2025 that came out better than I remembered, but everything I’d given away up to then had been cooked, Tom’s method, start to finish. This one sat in brine for weeks instead.

    The chillies came from the local market, not the garden, there was no garden yet. Fermented mango, mixed chillies, garlic, ginger, lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, lime zest, honey, white miso. It went slower than anything I’d made before and tasted better for it.

    A steel bowl full of red, yellow and orange market chillies
    Market chillies for Honey Monster, 17 January.
    A large jar of mango, red and yellow peppers, chillies and garlic fermenting in brine
    Honey Monster in the jar, January 2026.
    The Honey Monster label: a small horned monster holding a honey pot, framed by mangoes and red chillies

    Ten bottles, hand-labelled, EST. 2021 on the badge as a nod to where this actually started. Gone within weeks of giving them out. I called it Honey Monster. I had no idea at the time that it would be the last batch made without a single homegrown chilli in it.