If your chilli plants are yielding more chillies than you can use in one go, you can always air-dry some and use them later in the year, or use them to flavour oil, which in turn can be used to flavour various dishes. You can also freeze them, providing you take care to prepare them first and pack them well.

Air dried chillies: Using cotton thread, tie your chillies one by one securing each one as you go until you have an attractive string of chillies ready to hang out in the sun, or a warm place in the house. Within two weeks they should have shrivelled and dried. If fully dried they will last up to two years.

YOU WILL NEED 4oz (100g) red chillies 1¼ pints (1 litre) sunflower oil 2 tbspns paprika.

METHOD Having removed their stalks, place them whole unseeded into a liquidiser with a drop of oil and zap them until they are finely chopped.

Heat the oil to just below 120C (248F) and simmer gently for 15 minutes. Do ensure the heat of the oil doesn’t rise.

Remove from the heat, let cool a little, then stir in the paprika.

Allow to cool completely then pour into sterilized jars and seal. This oil will be ready to use straight away, or will keep for at least a year.

Freezing your peppers: This is easy, but to make things easier when you want to defrost and use them, first work out how you will cook with them. If you always chop your chillies before cooking, then prepare them before hand, removing seeds and chopping to size.

If you always use them whole, then de-seed and freeze as they are. You can then bag them in small bags so that you only take out the amount you need.

But do wrap them in at least three bags, to prevent them affecting other items in the freezer and getting freezer burn which will spoil their taste.

If the chillies have been wrapped securely, they should last at least a year in the freezer.