Timely Pepper Harvest?
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cjmiller
Location: Oregon, Willamette Valley
Posted: Sep-25-2004 at 3:48pm
Guessing when to harvest peppers has always been a big question to me. We planted Golden Bell, Staddon Select and Red Bull's Horn, they all did fine but all are still green. What should you look for as a matured pepper? I want to try roasting and freezing them this year-- Do you have some advice?
Carol
trav
Joined: Jul-16-2003
Location: Washington, Western
Posted: Sep-25-2004 at 8:08pm
At this point they're not going to do much more on the plant. If you want to use them, go ahead and pick them - also if the weather is threatening to freeze.
I'm a little surprised that none of them have colored up yet. They're all Territorial varieties. Did they get a late start? Or, conversely, did you set them out too early? A lot of people set out peppers and tomatoes at the same time, but peppers are significantly less cold-hardy as seedlings than even tomatoes.
In any case peppers can be harvested almost anytime. It's just that their flavor improves as they mature, because more sugars are allowed to develop.
I've got a couple articles about peppers that might be helpful.
Travis
bakingbarb
Joined: Jul-02-2004
Location: Washington, Western
Posted: Sep-25-2004 at 8:20pm
One way to extend when you set them out (ie setting them out earlier) is with those wall o waters. The peppers and the tomatoes in those were bigger then those without and the produced faster.
~BakingBarb
cjmiller
Location: Oregon, Willamette Valley
Posted: Sep-26-2004 at 10:36am
I set them out on June 15 (our anniversary) and placed wall-o-water around them, later I added the round tomato vine holder-upper's to give them more room inside the wall-0. They all had babies on them when I set them out, but still went into stasis and didnt start really flowering and producing new fruit until nearly August. thanks for the link to your articles, Trav
Carol
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