The End of the 2019 Pepper Season

Just a couple of weeks ago, I announced that I had started closing up shop for the 2019 pepper season. It’s always a bittersweet decision and I had hoped to extend the season a bit further. But, with night time temperatures approaching the high 30°F in the coming week – and with very little space left for storing picked peppers – I decided it was time to officially call it done and wrap things up. Well, almost.

As of the writing of this post, I have just two plants left – both Aji Charapita (shown above) – as they are still packed with ripening fruit. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to clean them up before the end of this week. Their small fruit are super easy to make room for in the already-stuffed freezer.

The plants that I removed this past weekend were pretty much done producing pods or were not going to finish ripening up before those cold nights arrived. In fact, the final harvest from those 12 plants didn’t amount to much as you can see below.

Making the decision to end a season is always a tough one. It’s certainly a little easier when Mother Nature gives you a solid nudge in that direction.