Oct 8 Harvest + thoughts, mostly about peppers

Wednesday, 08 Oct 08 (posted about 1 months ago) Sunny

1 medium-sized kale plant
4 thai chilis
1 orange bell pepper
1 pile of lettuce
2 mustard stalks
1 nasturtium seed

I pulled the kale when I thought I was going to try to put in both garlic plots at once. But it was the only thing in the west garlic plot that I was willing to pull just now, so… anyway. The lettuce was to make way for the east garlic patch. Plus, lunch. The mustard stalks were… just lying on the bench. I picked them yesterday and forgot about them.

These were the last ripening Thai chilis. There’s a bit of a break in ripening, possibly from the cold snap we just got through. In all previous instances of Thai chili harvesting, there were chilis I left on the plant because they weren’t quite there: a little too orangey. Not so, this time. There are a lot of chilis left on the plant, but none of them are borderline almost red. I probably won’t be harvesting chilis for a while now. We’re expecting warmer weather over the next couple of weeks, so maybe they’ll start ripening again.

This is probably my only ripe bell pepper I’ll be getting this year. There are 3 others on the plant, one of which is bell pepper sized; the others are 3cm in diameter. I probably shouldn’t bother with bell peppers again. It’s kind of shocking how few of them end up on a plant and how long it takes them to ripen. I just don’t think I’m a bell pepper person. I planted 3 bell pepper plants, and I’ve now gotten one bell pepper. Which, I ought to point out, did not come from the peppers I planted. It was a volunteer that showed up from the worm castings. I think next year I might do more fresnos. Fresnos are almost like bell peppers, and they do very well here. I didn’t plant any of them, yet I’ve gotten quite a decent supply of fresno peppers, not to mention the plant I just noticed where I wanted to make a garlic patch that is covered with green peppers that will ripen in a week or two. I swear it was not there before; it probably grew up in the eggplant then was uncovered when the eggplant blew over. I should leave one of the ripening peppers on the vine longer and save its seeds.

harvest

Want to comment?

Nax wrote:
Thank you for the long post. My boss is holding up all my work right now and I have nothing to do.

I did my bell peppers in 22" pots this year, and got 15 peppers per plant, my best yield ever. We’ve been drowning in bell peppers. I used them all summer instead of onions. Maybe try this? (Although if I were you I’d go for the spice, since you apparently can’t get them in the shops where you are… ;P)

Posted on 08 Oct 08 (about 1 months ago)
Cmagnus wrote:
Yeah, I think I’m going for spice next year. Spice likes me. It was only recently that I even developed a taste for sweet peppers anyway. Fresnos are slightly spicy. I think they have 2500 and 8000 scoville units, which is in the neighborhood of a jalapeno (with better flavour). I’ve been treating them as slightly more interesting bell peppers.

Posted on 08 Oct 08 (about 1 months ago)
Katxena wrote:
You Grow Girl just did an interesting post where she talks about overwintering peppers indoors, which made me think of you because of your fondness for peppers and your sun porch.

Like you, I’ll be skipping bell peppers next year entirely. Unlike you, I’ll also be skipping hot peppers! I might grow one jalapeño for pest control purposes — and because pepper plants are pretty.

Posted on 08 Oct 08 (about 1 months ago)
Cmagnus wrote:
Thanks for the suggestion, but peppers won’t survive on the sun porch. It isn’t heated, and it does freeze. It just freeze much, making it a happy place for greens. A friend gave us some peppers that are on the porch now, but they’ll have to come inside in a few weeks. I’m still not sure what I’m doing about light. We have this great yard that faces entirely south. Then we have a bunch of windows that face the wall of the northern neighbor’s house a few feet away. There are only a couple of south-facing windows, and none of them have any decent place to put things. Go figure. Have I told you that my house was built by a crazy person? My only guess is that it helps keep things cooler in the summer.

Posted on 08 Oct 08 (about 1 months ago)
Nax wrote:
I’m going to try some indoor overwintering this year, too, with similar problems. Only one small south-facing window, but shaded by a porch. I have a greenhouse window in the kitchen, for herbs, but the shelf is only rated for 15 pounds, so I’m limited to three plants at most. A large heated north-facing sunporch gets lots of light, but the only available surface is the top of the radiator, so I’ll be watering every three hours. This is assuming I remember. (I’m on the house plants 10 Most Wanted list for all the plants I’ve murdered through neglect.)

Posted on 09 Oct 08 (about 1 months ago)