Sunday, November 23, 2008

Pulling Pepper Plants

I can't remember where I heard this.  I think it was from Lynn....but I could be wrong.  I apologize in advance for not being able to give credit where credit is due.  Please feel free to correct me in the comments.

We had a forecast for our first hard freeze.  Temperatures  were expected to drop into the low 20's.  I still had pepper plants in the garden - loaded with fruit.  This was our best year ever for peppers - my plants were waste high!  We picked and picked and picked.  About every three or four days we'd go out and bring in a basket full!  We don't usually still have peppers this late but for some reason this year they just wouldn't give up...in fact they were still blooming in October and our nights were cool!  (In case you don't know, according to all the gardening books, that doesn't happen!) Go figure...just when you think you know what you are doing on the farm, something happens and you realize that you don't really know much of anything at all.  It is all in His hands and you just have to rely on Him completely. I think one of His purposes for gardening and farming is to keep us humble.

Knowing the freeze was coming, I still didn't want to waste any peppers.  I had a plan!  I picked all of our bell peppers and processed them.  I put enough in the freezer for fajitas  - we like to have them about once a month.  The rest I took to my Mom and she dehydrated them.  Mom is in charge of dehydrating here on the farm.  What a load she takes from my shoulders!  All I have to do is pick them and walk over to her house (just up from our garden) and a few days later she sends me back beautifully dehydrated peppers (or onion, squash, okra etc.) to store.  It's just like magic... Disney's got nothing on my Mom!

But, the hot peppers?!  What to do...what to do?  Then I remembered something Lynn said (I still think it might have been Lynn).  She talked about pulling up the plants and hanging them upside down to let the peppers continue to ripen.  Well, we'll try just about anything once.

Josiah told me he knew just what to do...good thing since I didn't have a clue - where do you put 80 pepper plants upside down?  He took a long section of re-bar and hung it inside our garden shed.  Elijah, Jeremy and I picked all of the red peppers off of the plants (they need to be red to get the right flavor and heat) and sent them into the house.  Then we began to pull up plants.  I knew that at 20 degrees they'd be dead by morning so we had nothing to loose.

We hung all plants that were still loaded with fruit upside down over this bar.  The building would stay warm enough that they wouldn't freeze even without heat.  And then we waited to see if the peppers would still turn red.

Here's what we found a few days later:



I couldn't believe it...not all of the fruit ripened but quite a bit of it did.  We picked these off and did it again a couple of times before the fruit began to soften to much to use.  Then the plants went to the compost pile.

Here is a picture of how Josiah strung the rope through the rafters and tied it to the pole. It took Josiah about 15 minutes to rig this up.



I am so impressed with Josiah - he is so gifted not only with his hands but his ability to see a problem and see a solution.  His brothers and I can sit and figure and figure...trying to work out a way to accomplish something and Josiah just walks in and says..."Well...it goes like this...or you can do this".  It is just amazing.  When I can't figure something out...I call Josiah.  My mind just doesn't work like that...well...some days..it just doesn't work...but that's another story!

This was so successful that I'll remember this next year if a freeze heads our way before our pepper plants are done.

Oh, and while I was processing the peppers for fajitas...I found this little guy



...now what's up with that?

If anyone has a great gardening idea, please share it with us...we're all still learning!

Blessings,

11 comments:

  1. Hi Cheri,
    I can't remember if I told you that or not, but this year we did it with our cayenne peppers, and it worked for us, too! We had our first frost ages ago (and have a lot of snow to boot), so I'm jealous!

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  2. Hey there farmgirl.

    I tried this trick last year when an 'old-timer' around here told me about it. It worked so well that I did it again this year. In fact I wondered if it would work with others in the 'night-shade' family like tomatoes, so I tried it with tomatoes this year. Sure enough the tomatoes ripened right up. I lost a few, but I gained much more than would have been lost to frost.

    Great job!

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  3. Lynn,
    Snow...I'm jealous. We've had lots of flurries already. Unusual here. Hoping that's a sign of a good snowfall to come this winter.
    Blessings,
    Cheri

    Hi Rob,
    So glad to know it works on tomatoes too! Thanks so much!!!
    Blessings,
    Cheri

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  4. hi cheri:

    wanted to let you know pam's blog. she is so excited and will luv this, she probably has already read too.

    homegrownandheavenbound.blogspot.com

    luv kay

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  5. That is really good to know!!! I wish I had known it this year. We have already had several freezes and snow. Yesterday morning it was 11 degrees. That is VERY UNSEASONABLY cold for around here.

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  6. Marci,
    Unseasonably cold here too. Several freezes, lots of snow flurries...hope we get a good snow for sledding this year.
    Blessings,
    Cheri

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  7. How amazing!! Good thinker, your boy!!

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  8. Thanks for the idea! I wish I'd known this year -- I had lots of peppers and tomatoes that got frozen but hadn't ripened yet... I'll try this next year. Thanks!

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  9. Beth,
    I agree...I have a good recipe for using the last of the green tomatoes before a freeze. Got that from Julie.
    See you Sunday,
    Cheri

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