Some of you might remember our trials and tribulations from earlier this year with our pepper plants. That late cold weather that we saw, and forcing our peppers into the outdoors before the season was “right,” has come at a cost. Our production across all of our peppers is way lower than it usually is at this point in the season.
We knew that was going to be a cost going in and decided to do it anyway. But, that’s not to say we have nothing interesting to report!
One of the new-to-us trials we have going on this year is the traditional cayenne pepper. You won’t find this pepper variety on any northern pepper growing guide, but with a ~75 day maturity time, it was well worth testing to see how it would perform!
Despite the low production rates we’re seeing overall, our cayenne’s are packing on the weight. Pushing 7+ inches and a couple inches in girth, we don’t see a lot of “northern friendly” hot peppers push this kind of size.
We are watching these intently to see if we have a shot at full maturation in our generally cool climate. With another seven+ weeks of season left, we think there’s a pretty good shot. We’re not yet sure how it’ll unfold. It’s easy to get green peppers grown outdoors, not so easy to push them into full ripeness.
The trials here continue. For better or for worse. Even if our cayenne don’t pop off this year, we’re not yet done with them. The relative heavy production we’re seeing in a bad year could mean exceptional production in a good year!
