Two years ago I grew “Orange Marmalade” sweet peppers that produced fully ripe peppers with which I was able to save seeds for this year. Since I had planted them 60 feet away from jalapenos, I fully expected them to not have cross pollinated, but I hadn’t realized how prolific bees were.
This spring I sowed these “marvellous” seeds in flats ahead of time, prepared to set out their seedlings once it warmed up. I anticipated harvesting similar delicious peppers, planting them 60 feet away from the jalapenos, but all except one of the plants produced jalapenos. It’s a good thing we like jalapenos.
When it got cooler this year I placed a tomato cage around each plant and wrapped plastic around the cage to extend the season. All but one of the jalapenos were still green this week and when I saw some of them start to rot before they turned red, I decided to harvest what was left. I washed, trimmed and dried them, then blended the jalapeno chips into a powder to use for the next two years because next year, I’m only sowing purchased sweet pepper seeds.
I could plant them several meters apart to try to prevent cross-pollination, but why take the risk when bees proliferate and seeds are viable for five years in my cold, dry pantry? Next year I’ll only plant one variety of sweet peppers and save their seeds, expecting them to produce seeds true to their kind and the following year I’ll grow jalapenos and save their seeds.
If I hadn’t wrapped each pepper plant with the plastic, I suspect they would have stopped producing a month ago. This final harvest was about half of what the peppers produced because I started picking them early July and at that time I was worried because I hadn’t seen any “Orange Marmalade” plants. Last year this variety continued to produce sweet, ripe orange peppers until mid-November and are worth saving.
Perhaps next year when I cover each transplant with the “Wall O Waters”, a plastic, tepee-like structure of tubes that one fills with water to keep them warmer on cold nights, I won’t remove them and might harvest more ripe peppers.
Please contact mary_lowther@yahoo.ca with questions and suggestions since I need all the help I can get.
