Harvesting Peppers – Picking Purple Peppers
Purple Jalapeno Pepper
Harvesting peppers has started with a bang this Summer 2020 season. I’ve harvested a few in the past couple of weeks, but now the peppers have started growing in earnest. And picking my purple peppers looks to be next on the agenda!
Purple Jalapeno Pepper
Jalapenos are among the easiest peppers to grow (at least for me). Although I am growing two types of jalapenos this year (Purple Jalapeno and Tricked You), it’s the Purple Jalapeno chili pepper that is clearly leading the way.
It’s June 26th and I’ve picked about five jalapenos from the plant, and I think I have at least 10 more peppers waiting to be harvested. The plant is only about 20 inches tall, and it just keeps flowering and setting fruit with abandon. I am seriously glad that I only planted one of these, because it will provide a ton before the fall frosts show up.
I’m growing Purple Jalapeno in a 3-gallon fabric pot. I’m trying to remember to give my peppers a light fertilizer feeding every other week (since they are in containers) but I probably missed a week or two. In other words — no special treatment.
Purple Jalapeno is an open pollinated pepper variety. I can save seeds from one of the peppers, and I’ll get more of the same next year.
Buena Mulata Peppers
Buena Mulata Peppers
Buena Mulata is a cayenne-type chile pepper that, if possible, is even more prolific than Purple Jalapeno! The plant is only about 18 inches tall and I’ve picked about seven chili peppers so far. I easily have 15 more waiting on the plant!
I’ll pick a few more soon (just to keep the peppers coming), but I want to leave some on the plant for a bit to ripen to red. I decided to grow Buena Mulata for the chili peppers, but this variety can very easily double as an ornamental pepper plant.
Just like Purple Jalapeno, Buena Mulata is open-pollinated and is growing in a 3-gallon fabric pot. For that matter, they are actually growing side-by-side. 😀
Picking Purple Peppers
I started picking purple peppers early this month (June). To be honest, the peppers have not been very spicy yet. Why not?
Part of the reason is that it hasn’t been that warm yet here in East Tennessee. While we’ve had one or two days around 90 so far, most of the days have been in the mid 80s. We had a cool April and May, so the peppers haven’t had the opportunity to “chile up” and get spicy. But, as we get more into the hotter days of summer, the peppers will start turning their own heat up.
In addition, as they ripen to their final color (in both cases the color is red), the hotter they become.
I’ll be doing a harvest video soon, with not only these two chile pepper varieties but also some others. I’ll post the link here as soon as I have it posted.
Meanwhile, feel free to wander around the site and enjoy the info (and the peppers). See you soon!
What Peppers Have Capsaicin?
What peppers have capsaicin? That’s the question of the day, if you are looking either for hot peppers — or those that are not! So what is capsaicin, and what peppers have it?
What is Capsaicin?
The first thing is to understand what capsaicin is. For one, it’s the component that make spicy peppers taste spicy. In its pure form, it’s highly irritant, but highly diluted (like in your average chili pepper) it can provide that pleasurable kick of heat.
Capsaicin is also used an as ingredient in many medical ointments — surprisingly, as an analgesic! Very interesting for a chemical which is an irritant. Just a little can help relieve pain, while a lot can cause burns.
Capsaicin does not dissolve in water, so if you are eating a pepper and it’s too hot for you, don’t drink water or soda — it will just spread it around your mouth. Instead, something dairy based like sour cream, milk or ice cream will help to cool the burning sensation.
In it’s pure form, capsaicin has a Scoville rating of 16,000,000 (yes, 16 million). And you thought Bhut Jokolia was super-hot at something over 1 million Scoville!
What Peppers Have Capsaicin?
Now that we know what it is, what peppers have capsaicin? A few years ago I would have said that bell peppers don’t have it; however, there are now bell peppers which have it. Not many varieties, but there are at least three that I have heard about. The vast majority of the time, bell peppers will not have the capsaicin in them. (You have to go looking for the bells that have some capsaicin.)
What about other peppers, especially the ones marketed as being “no heat” (like “no heat habaneros”) — do they have capsaicin?
In general, peppers listed as being sweet will not have it, or will have capsaicin in such low quantities as to be absent. Examples include sweet banana peppers and sweet frying peppers. There are also a few ornamental peppers which have very low or no capsaicin — Sweet Pickle and Chilly Chilli are two that come to mind.
- Note: If you are familiar with the seasoning called Old Bay, it has a Scoville rating of about 800. This gives you a point of reference for comparing.
As to the hot pepper varieties marketed as being “no heat” versions of the hot stuff…don’t count on there being no capsaicin in these peppers. What they have is just a little bit (usually under 400 Scoville), and it’s mostly concentrated in the seeds and the placenta (the light membrane on the inside ribs of the pepper). If you remove those before eating, you’ll have reduced your chance of some accidental “hot stuff” a great deal.
One other thing — there is less capsaicin in an unripe pepper. As a pepper ripens, the capsaicin concentrates more. So eating the peppers while they are in their green state (or whatever color their unripe state is) will also help reduce the burn.
Conversely, waiting until the hot peppers are ripe will increase the heat!
Looking for Some Hot Stuff?
I mentioned above that you’ll mostly find capsaicin in the seeds and the placental membrane. However, for the true hot peppers (those marketed as being hot), you’ll also find it in the “meat” of the pepper. And on the outside of the peppers as well.
For example, if you’re picking habaneros, scotch bonnets or any of the super-hots, you’re well advised to wear disposable gloves while doing so. You probably also want to plant the really hot peppers in a corner of the garden where you won’t easily brush up against them. The capsaicin on the exterior of the pepper can transfer to your clothing, and from your clothing to somewhere sensitive.
Been there, done that, it’s not comfortable. But I can’t deny that really hot peppers are super-fun to grow (carefully, LOL)!
Yellow Cayenne Pepper
The yellow cayenne pepper is doing well in my fall garden. It’s had some setbacks, but my oh my, are there peppers! I certainly can’t complain that there aren’t enough, or that the peppers aren’t big enough.
Yellow cayenne is shaping up to be a nice choice for the fall garden.
What a Wet September!
I planted the pepper around Labor Day 2014, and after a few nice days, the rest of the month was rain, rain…and more rain. Even though it was in the greenhouse, it was right by the door, which stayed open for ventilation. So my poor pepper got very wet. And then to make matters worse, the sunlight was hit and miss — there were days at a stretch where there was little to no direct sunlight. No wonder why the plant ended up a little on the leggy side by the end of September!
I planted the peppers in a smart pot, so the roots were able to get enough air and not end up drowning. I am not sure that the peppers would have made it had I planted in a standard plastic pot, as wet as it was.
October brought more challenges, in the form of an insect attack. While the insects didn’t bother the peppers, they did enjoy munching on the leaves (groan). I finally sprayed with some organic neem oil and the remaining leaves weren’t find of that — some of the leaves withered up. But finally, after some days of sunshine and when cooler nights started, Yellow Cayenne started looking happier. And now towards the end of October, the ripe peppers are flowing in!
Peppers Galore
Cayenne is what I would call a medium-hot pepper. Well, compared to things like habaneros, at any rate! Yellow cayenne is somewhere in the neighborhood of 40,000 Scoville units.
Cayenne Yellow bears fairly early; actually it was the earliest of my fall pepper garden. The peppers are around three to five inches long. They start off green, and stay that way for awhile — you can eat them green if you like. But, if you want them sweeter and hotter, wait until they mature to a golden yellow. And if you can, I’d recommend waiting until they turn yellow before you pick them. The green ones taste…well, green! (They are indeed hot though, even when they are green.)
Talking about golden yellow — it’s a really nice change from red peppers. Not to mention it looks great in the garden (as well as on your plate). They kind of remind me of splashes of bright sunshine.
The plant is not stingy in the least with its fruiting — it started bearing early on, and it’s happily continued bearing. One plant has kept me in plenty of chile peppers that are nice and spicy.
