Congrats. Is this your first one ever? Soon there will be more.

I've been waiting for the green bells to get large enough to harvest and use, and they are almost there. Their slowness has been holding up the first batch of salsa, so I'm more than ready to harvest them so I can get on with doing some canning. It will be a few weeks yet before any of the bell peppers reach their mature colors of red, orange and yellow. I only harvest them green for salsa. Otherwise, I let them mature so that I can use them in Habanero Gold, where the colored bits of chopped pepper serve as part of the "confetti" that makes the jelly so attractive.

I only have three plants, but I have 4-6 ready to harvest. They are still green, but that is the way I pick them early in the season. It seems as though they will set more fruit if I don't let them ripen early in the year. I have already picked several jalapeno and hot banana.

Larry

Larry, I agree about picking them green early in the season so you can get more to set for later on. That is exactly what I do, and it works out perfectly because I use the green ones with salsa, which tends to be what I am canning in June and July, and the mature colored ones in August when I'm canning Habanero Gold. I have "Mucho Nacho" jalapenos ready to pick on the same day I pick the first green bells, so probably tomorrow. The habaneros haven't even set fruit yet, but they have blooms now so I think they're about to start setting fruit. Considering how bad the drought is here, I'm just thrilled the plants are making anything at all.

Dawn

Will it have time to turn red before heat destroys it? Well pffft Guess that's according to weather. Oh well. I'm excited bout my first. Tomatoes are a must but bell peppers are even more so for me. I've tried several times but failed.

The corn is setting ears.

Little Miss' sunflower hut is on the rise.

Roma tomato plant is heavy-laden.

Potatoes are about ready to dig up.

The Jerusalem artichoke is at 5'-5" tall!

I harvest the icky cabbage head today and washed it off. My son was like, "Is that home-grown cabbage?!" Indeed. It'll go to the rabbits, but we're just as proud!

And... today... I caught my son. He was quietly walking through the buck wheat flowers waving at his chest. I could tell he was mesmerized by it. At peace. He cracked a smile. OH how I wished I'd gotten a picture! Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Coleman. Your kindness resulted in the precious!!

I had so much fun today I went all day long. Now, I'm on crutches, but can't wait to get back at it. We started fall season flats today. WOOT!!

Bon, look, I have water melons also!.....Not really, but Madge and I did pull a joke on my step dad some years ago, he is a man that does not take jokes very well. We bought the largest water melon we could find and placed it in our vines. My step dad came down to our house while we were in the garden and Madge called him over and ask " how do you tell when these things are ripe"? He was beside himself, he just could not believe we had a water melon that large so early in the year. When he rolled it over and saw that Walmart sticker on it he did not know weather to laugh or get mad.

The peppers in the picture were picked to take some weight off the plants to help protect from plant breaking.

Larry

ahahahaha Larry, that's priceless!

Bon, Your peppers have tons of time to mature to red before the weather gets them.

Bon, First, think positive....the weather is not going to get them!

Then, just keep an eye on the pepper plant. Sometimes with a youngish plant, the pepper can grow so fast that it almost outgrows the foliage and then the pepper gets exposed to a lot of sunlight, gets sunscald, and is ruined. So, make sure the pepper somehow stays shaded. With peppers that develop a little later in the summer, the plants usually have enough foliage to prevent the sunscald.

Most years, in my garden (and your plants should perform the same way), the bell peppers produce endlessly. The later in the season we go, the bigger the plant gets and the more fruit it produces. Mine will produce until at least November, or the first hard freeze/frost where I don't cover it with row cover----whichever comes first. I stake my peppers or cage them with those 3-ring tomato cages that aren't at all large enough to sufficiently cage an indeterminate tomato plant (or even an ISI one) but they are great for peppers. Pepper plants have stalks/branches that are more brittle than those of tomato plants so without staking or caging, the heavy load of fruit they carry later in the season often causes the plants to suffer from limb breakage, or the plant may split in half, or the plant may completely fall over, though still rooted in the ground. When those types of things happen, peppers previously shielded from the sun may suddenly be exposed to direct sunlight, and then will sunscald and be ruined. So, to keep your plant happy as late in the year as possible, stake it or support it. Look at the plant right now and try to imagine it with 10 or 15 or 20 peppers on it. Hard to picture? Maybe it is sort of hard to picture since this is your first pepper plant, but they can become very heavily loaded later in the year. Pepper plants are incredibly productive. The heat sometimes causes a little blossom drop with bell peppers, but it isn't usually a major problem. Even if blossom drop becomes an issue when the temperatures get a bit higher than they are now, if you just keep the plant watered and fed, it will produce peppers like crazy when cooler temperatures return.

It sounds like y'all are having a grand time with all the garden activity, and that's terrific....and every day should be like that. There's nothing better than spending time watching the miracle of plant growth. Sometimes when I stand and look at a monster tomato plant loaded with fruit, I marvel that such an incredible plant can grow in just a few months from a tiny tomato seed. I've been gardening all my life, but I still feel awed by the miracle of it all sometimes.

What happened to the cabbage? Did something affect it so that it was not fit for human consumption.

Pace yourself so you don't have to spend the rest of the summer in bed or on crutches. Overdoing it now could ruin the rest of your summer, and I know that you do not want for your wonderful garden summer to end prematurely.

Larry, Those are some fine-looking peppers. I've had to harvest some early some years for the same reason. My bells are not that big this year because we've only had about 10 or 11" of rain, but at least we are getting peppers.

One of my favorite sweet pepper varieties to grow is Super Heavyweight, but I haven't grown it in several years. Know why? Because it produces such large peppers and so many of them that even when it is staked or caged, it still tends to break from the weight of all the fruit.

Y'all are bad, bad, bad, bad and bad....and that was a hysterically funny prank.

Dawn

The cold almost got all my peppers. They are a bit behind but they are doing well. That being said I did harvest a handful of Serrano peppers today.

Robert

I wish I had planted bell peppers. I guess it would've been a good year for them since it hasn't been so hot.

Leslie

You can plant some for fall. They still have the plants in the stores here, although I realize you're a lot further west, it is hotter and maybe the stores there have cleared out all the plants. Some of the plants I've seen in big box stores are in bloom, and some even have peppers on them already.

My hot peppers are later than usual. Most years, I already would have been harvesting for a week or more, but I'm just happy to have peppers after the spring we had with all those recurring late frosts/freezes.

I am so far behind yall but I will try to relax and breathe. My peppers all died different tragic ways. So I bought some and replanted last week, except for my beautiful fling pepper Big jim? it looks great but only 8" tall so far.
Patience I keep saying to myself..
kim

Don't fret the small stuff, Kim. Breathe in, breathe out - repeat. At least you have yours planted. I had talked myself out of having a garden this year, so I didn't even start any peppers, tomatoes or even make sure I had cuc and squash seeds. Well, I can't turn down free plants so when the friend that I go help with spring and early summer propagation in his wholesale greenhouses (just to get out of the house instead of doing housework....LOL) was getting ready to dump excess plants, my heart just couldn't let him do that. So, you know the rest of the story. I've got to get them in the ground this week and out of my greenhouse and under the tree where they are all scattered!

Gardening - isn't it fun! Just not enough hours in the day....
Mary

Kim, Mary offered great words of wisdom.

Breathe, woman, breathe.

The growing season is long and the first frost is far away. Early in the season I always worry I won't get enough bell peppers when I need them (at the same time as tomatoes so I can make and can a lot of salsa). Despite my fears, it always works out fine. Your plants will grow, flower, form peppers and keep you busy in late summer/autumn harvesting them all and figuring out how to use them up. All they've really missed is the late cold nights in May and the heavy June rainfall, both of which could have stunted the plants. Maybe this is your chance to grow some peppers that might be slightly late but that also will benefit from not being in the ground during some stressful spring weather. I think you'll be amazed how quickly pepper plants that are put into the ground in June when it already is consistently nice and warm will perform for you.

Mary, I almost talked myself out of growing a garden this year because of the drought, and I did plant only 2 of the 4 fenced-in garden plots, but I'm glad I went ahead and did it. We've had a very productive garden so far despite drought, so if the garden ended tomorrow, I still would feel like we harvested enough from it to make it worth our while.

I'm glad you took in all those little orphan plants so they have a chance to grow and produce.

I agree....not enough hours in the day, but as the old song goes "ain't we got fun". : )

Dawn

Amen, Dawn, amen!
Mary

Bon, Your peppers have tons of time to mature to red before the weather gets them.

Eyes grow wide, sits up closer to the screen...

Most years... the bell peppers produce endlessly.

Bottom lip quivers to stifle tears of joy....

*runs outside to immediately stake the plant*

Last year I had the best peppers ever. We brought one inside before a killing frost with a dozen peppers on it. This year seedlings either didn't survive or are spindly. Bought 2 bells, they have aphids, though one has a baby pepper on it, the plant seems small and leggy compared to last year. They are in cages but the coffee cans I put around them as wind breaks look like they could do the job for these wimpy plants. The jalapenos are in a bed where everything else is thriving and the peppers just aren't growing. I'm going to try starting a couple more plants for fall.

Amy, When it was time in winter to sow seeds of tomato and pepper plants indoor, I held off and started the pepper seeds significantly later than the tomato seeds because we have had the recurring cold nights, along with their freezing temperatures and frosts, as late as the first week of May here in every year since 2007 except for 2012. I think I sowed sweet pepper seeds a couple of weeks after the tomato seeds and then hot pepper seeds a month after that. It was the latest I've ever sown hot pepper seeds, but it worked out okay. We stayed cold so late---our last frosty night again was the first week in May---that I doubt the hot pepper plants would have done well if I had put them in the ground any earlier than I did.

I planted the sweet peppers in early to mid-April along with some of the tomato plants (my earliest tomato plants went into the ground the last week in March). I had to cover up those plants with frost blankets numerous times to protect them on late cold nights, but since I had them in the same raised beds as the tomato plants, it was easy to do. I didn't plant the hot peppers that I raised from seed until late April through mid-May, so those plants are significantly behind the sweet bells both in size and productivity, but I think they'll produce fine in mid-summer through autumn. I did buy and plant 6 Mucho Nacho jalapeno plants in April, and those are heavily loaded with peppers I'm harvesting now to use in making/canning salsa. I usually grow Mucho Nacho from seed, but was out of seed this year and forgot to order more.

My late planting of hot pepper plants just seemed to sit there for a few weeks and not really grow, but they are growing well now. Maybe the heavy rainfall last week finally got them growing.

Oddly, the habanero pepper plants are growing like mad and are flowering and setting fruit. Usually they are just about the last hot peppers to set fruit in my garden, and this year they are ahead of all the others, except for the purchased Mucho Nacho plants. It has been such a crazy weather year with all the lack of rain and the late cold nights, as well as tons of voracious grasshoppers, and nowhere is the craziness apparent more than in the behavior of the pepper plants.

Dawn

Oh Bon - I just love your postings. You make my day!
Mary

And 3 more..... they look like little green outie belly buttons!

I'm glad you enjoy them, Mary. I love sharing. This is TOO fun!

What's wrong with my bell pepper!?

It is sunscald---similar to what we humans get when we are sunburned. It happens when a pepper fruit gets more direct sunlight than it can handle. This damaged pepper will not heal itself, so you should remove that pepper from the plant so it can direct its energy towards viable fruit.

Here is a link that might be useful: Sunscald

Would you believe I still have this pepper plant? I treated it as someone suggested and it's alive and has several bells on it. I'm hoping for red, but it's getting cool. Mesonet at nearby Perkins indicates overnight lows in the 50s.

I like to add a few degrees lower than Perkins for various reason. Should I be covering it with a blanket?

I see frost damage (sporadic yellow leaves) on my molokia and, of course, the black walnut tree but nothing else.

bon

Frost? Y'all have had frost? I wasn't aware the temperatures had dropped that low already.

You can cover it up if you want, but uncover it early in the mornings before the sun gets very high in the sky at all, or it will roast.

All my pepper plants, sweet and hot, still are in full production, and blooming and setting more fruit all the time. Peppers love autumn weather.I let them produce as long as they can. When it seems like the first frost or freeze is inevitable, I spend the day stripping the plants of their fruit so I won't lose it. We usually have our first freeze in mid-November, though it has happened as early as late Sept and as late as mid-December. You can get huge loads of peppers when the autumn weather cooperates.

Low temperatures (50s and even high 40s) generally do not slow down pepper production in fall as much as they do in spring because the daytime highs are still nice and warm and the ground is very warm now compared to how cool it is in early to mid-spring, so the peppers just shrug off the few hours of cool temperatures they encounter on cool autumn nights.

Our temperatures are all over the place---in the low to mid 50s at night and the mid 80s to even low 90s during the day. I think last week we had a day that hit 96, but also a night that hit 51. It is the kind of weather that the pepper plants, in particular, seem to appreciate after a long, hot summer.

Last night our Burneyville mesonet station dropped all the way down to 48, but at our house it only went down to 54. I'm glad we stayed warmer than Burneyville. I'm not ready for temperatures in the 40s yet.

Yeah, still working on my little mini climate zones. I always says it's kinda weird in my yard. It truly is. I have a bunch of mushrooms growing in some places, too. But 32 does seem a bit drastic for this time of year.

We had a surprise this morning:

Cold weather coming up!

Bon, Because our property is essentially a creek hollow, with three different creeks, our elevation is all over the place, and different elevations are affected differently by the weather. It drives me crazy, but over the years I've learned where the hot spots and the cold spots are and I just plant accordingly. Without floating row cover it would be awfully hard in springtime to get the warm-season plants up and growing without losing them to frost. Since warm air rises, our whole property gets colder than the property on higher ground to our south and west, but even at that, there are some spots that get a lot colder than others because they are more low-lying. Sometimes I am surprised by how long plants growing in the hot spots can hang on in the fall when plants at a lower elevation already have been frosted.

The surprise lily looks great, and your daughter is so beautiful.

I haven't looked at the forecast yet this morning to see what they're saying tonight's low temps will be, but when I looked at it yesterday, they had us going down into the 40s tonight/tomorrow morning. If that happens, it will be our coldest morning since early May. Our mesonet station dropped into the 40s last night, but we're further south and east than it is and we only dropped down to 50.

I'm not ready for widespread cold weather, but a cool morning will be a pleasant change.

I haven't dug sweet potatoes yet and I am not in a hurry to dig them, but I do need to watch the soil temperatures and be sure to dig them before the soil temperatures drop below 50-55 degrees.

Dawn

Our forecast is for 39 tonight, but it seems to be an isolated event and will warm up again. Our temp has been dropping all day and we are now at 56.

Brrrr. That's too cool for October, Carol. I am glad it is only going to be for a day or two. We are supposed to be back in the 90s by the middle of next week, but hopefully the 90s are about done with us for this year......and I'm not really ready for the 30s yet either.

I am happy to report that my two bell pepper plants -including the previously infected one - was loaded down with bell peppers. They were kinda small, but I didn't amend the soil. I did get quite a few that turned red and I am absolutely giddy with the flavor.

Yay! I'm so happy for you.

It has been a great pepper year here, particularly considering the never-ending drought. I'm harvesting the last of mine today in advance of the coming frost that is expected on Saturday morning.

Often, bell peppers will struggle in mid-summer heat, especially when accompanied by drought, but then rebounds beautifully for fall. It sounds like that is exactly what yours did.

Peppers are heavy feeders and the richer their soil, (or you can just fertilize heavily when the soil isn't yet as well-amended as you'd like), the more they produce. My pepper beds got heavy amending with compost before spring planting (more compost than usual), and you could tell by how well they did produce.

I always try to get lots of green bells ready to harvest and use at the same time that I have tomatoes ready for salsa-making. Then, after the salsa-making is over, I let them stay on the plant longer and mature to red, orange or yellow so I can use them in the Habanero Gold jelly. (Your peppers are diced into 1/8" squares, giving Hab Gold jelly a common nickname of Confetti Jelly, and I like to have red confetti but even green bells will look pretty floating in the gold jelly.) After I harvest all the fully ripe, fully colored ones in mid- through late-summer, they set fruit again for fall. Those are the ones I'm harvesting now. Some have colored up, but since Sept. was so dry and hot, many are still fairly small and green. I'll harvest them all anyway since the frost will kill any I leave behind.

Dawn

As always, you were absolutely right. I tell ya, I'm tickled to get through an entire season with some production and know kinda what happens with a few varieties of veggies. Watching the growth patterns and gaining insight to spacing needs. And especially knowing how they react to the soil as is. Most of my stuff wasn't amended. They did well! The not knowing is what drives me crazy. And these will come easy in the spring. Yay!

and it's really awesome to know me.. where I get lazy, what's ridiculously difficult for me to handle and finding ways to make it easier. I'm winter sowing to see if I can get some things to come up on their own since I have plenty of mulch and good dirt. I really hate starting indoors. I'm certain I will have a bunch next spring, but the more I can reduce the happier I am.

It's truly amazing how we're all different. In the beginning I was like "ooh.. she's doing this. I must!" But, in reality, I need to let a bunch of things go to seed that would drive you batty, but only because I'm happy to forage them for the bunnies. Next year I'll have the molokhia, alfalfa, lambsquarters, varieties of amaranth, Austrian peas and some other natives. Funny ... I don't mind weeding but hate starting seedlings. Weird.

I was speaking of pepper jelly to my son last night. We started reminiscing over those wonderful Yukon Gold potatoes that came out of the garden. It is so awesome to see the kids get so excited. But those potatoes... were awesome. We agreed to expand the potato bed and put in "bunches and bunches and I'll help you keep them watered, Momma!" hehe