Page 4 << Peppers Page 5 >> Page 6

August 26. First harvest! 32 peppers in all. Tasty and very hot!

August 31. The sprinkler is just barely visible under all the leaves.

Here's a shot from below where you can see what is happening. More and more are turning red. I've noticed that the peppers closer to the bottom of the plant are turning red first. They also turn red from the tips and slowly transform to red a the tops.

Here's a close up of a nice group in the sun. These are ready to pick. The way to tell if a pepper is ready to pick is first the color has turned completely red, then you gently lift upwards. If the pepper snaps away easily and drops into your hand without much effort it is ripe and ready. If you have to apply extra force to try and get the pepper to break away from the plant it is not ready. With a vertical lift, picking should be smooth and easy.

Further up, the peppers are still green. Now that the weather is beginning to cool and the days are getting shorter, the conditions signal the beginning of the end. These too, will turn red in just a few weeks.

This pepper near the top shows a slight purple color as many of them do.

And at the very top, even at this late in the season, some of the plants are still producing flowers and new pepper starts.

September 8. Today I picked 172 more peppers! Production is in full swing now.

I picked them and washed them in the sink while wearing rubber gloves. I learned my lesson from last year. If you handle these with bare hands, anything you touch will start to burn.

September 14. The harvest continues today. Here is a picture of me in action. As you can see I'm using my rubber gloves again for picking. The hotness on these will rub off on anything they come in contact with.

The peppers glow bright red in the afternoon sun.

The large salad bowl is filling up.

Here they are after a nice cold water wash in the sink. Today's total: 480 peppers!

This shows the variety I picked today. I placed several on a cutting board with the yard stick. Some plants produced very big peppers, while others produced small crinkly ones. The green peppers were ones that I picked by accident.

Here's a close up of the small ones.

A closer view of the large ones. Most of the ones I picked today looked liked the peppers shown in the middle.

I spread them out on some towels to dry.

Go to page 6 to see drying methods. Page 6