A Sample Pepper Harvest

The peppers were planted late, also, but they are producing fairly.  I learned that I can plant my peppers twice as dense in a raised bed next spring.  I had never planted them is a 5′ x 16′ raised bed before, so I wanted to leave them plenty of room to expand.  Lesson learned:  they don’t need the room that I left them.  I had planted 3 to 4 plants across the 5′ length, only about 10 rows along the 16′ length.  Next spring I plan to start twice as much pepper seeds – that means 144 plants instead of 72 seedlings.

The large red peppers in the center top are Cubanelle peppers, a very nice sweet pepper.  The orange peppers in the top right are Tequila Sunrise, a mildly hot pepper.  The long red peppers under the Tequilas are Jimmy heirlooms, a nice sweet, thin skinned pepper.  Under them are Cayenne hot peppers.  To the left of the small cayenne are a red and a green heirloom jalapeno pepper.  The seeds are only viable from the red, mature jalapeno.  Under and next to them are more cayenne peppers, including 1 green one.  In the bottom left corner is another Tequila Sunrise.  The yellow/green peppers on the lower left side are Sweet Banana peppers – heirlooms.  Above them on the left are red Chili peppers.  I originally got these seeds from a dried chili pepper at Kroger.  Finally, the orange pepper on the upper left corner is a Golden Marconi, a sweet pepper.  My Golden Marconi peppers did not grow as large as normally this year.  I am hoping that the seeds are still genetically good and that the smaller size was due to new, not very fertile soil.  I will plant these seeds next year and if the peppers do not grow to their usual larger size, I may have to purchase new heirloom seeds.

Next year I will not be growing 2 varieties of peppers that I had previously grown for years:  Brown Bell and Pimento peppers.  This year, they were stunted and the peppers that grew to somewhat maturity were afflicted with what appears to be anthracnose.  I tossed these peppers and plants in the burn pile – they will NOT be composted so as to not spread what ever it is that is afflicting the peppers.