COLUMNIST: ELI APPLEBY-DONALD
When I sat down in January to write the very first article, this was the moment I was looking forward to: harvesting our glorious peppers and all the ways we can help to make it bountiful. As a bonus treat, I have shared some of my favourite pepper recipes with you too.
Firstly, we need to applaud all the readers who have been growing along this year. Cultivating peppers outdoors here in Scotland was always going to be a challenge, but this year we had a particularly bad June with temperatures dropping far below the optimum for pepper growing. So, if you were trying your hand at peppers for the first time and have found it hard, then know that Mother Nature has been against you, making things extra difficult. Do not give up because we never know what next year will bring weather wise.
I hope that as you are reading your copy of the magazine, you are doing so with a contented smile on your face as you look at the potential bounty your plants have produced: lots of green bell peppers, swelling and maybe even starting to change colour into those lovely yellows, oranges, and reds.
Maybe you have even had a fully ripe pepper or two already and are now waiting to take the next steps to encourage your plants to ripen those gorgeous fruits and give you that well-earned harvest basket.
As usual, I have some tips for you to help our little pepper babies along as our summer days start to cool down, because, as I have mentioned in previous articles, our peppers need heat in order to ripen those lovely fruits.
During our warmer summer days, our plants had a thick canopy of leaves which helped to shield the fruit and prevent them from being scorched by strong, direct sunlight. Now that the days have cooled a little and the light is not so intense, we want to begin the process of thinning out the leaves and stems on the plant. There are three main reasons I do this:
1. Enhanced airflow: thinning out the foliage improves airflow around the plants which is a great help in preventing problems caused by the change in humidity. We do not want all of our hard work to be lost at the last stage due to fungus or mildew, so airflow is key.
2. Better light penetration: as well as increasing airflow, removing excess leaves allows more sunlight to reach the inner parts of the plant. This promotes healthier and more robust fruit development and lets the warmth from the late summer sun heat the fruit, aiding ripening.
3. Resource allocation: pruning also helps the plant direct its energy towards ripening the fruit rather than maintaining excess leaves and small fruit.
I am fully aware of just how scary and confusing the idea of pruning your beautiful plants can be, so let's break it down into the individual elements.
Initial pruning: this is the simplest job and one we are all aware of from much of the gardening we already do, it is simply to keep things tidy. Start by removing the lower leaves and any branches that are touching the soil. This prevents soil-borne diseases from splashing onto the leaves during watering or rain.
Topping the plant: pinching out the growing tips from our plants is second nature to a lot of us in the early stages of our plant development. Think dahlias, for example, early on we pinch out the growing tips to encourage plants to put out more side shoots and therefore more blooms.
We do something similar now by pruning out the tips of the plants, but not to encourage more side shoots, at this time of year the plant knows that the season is winding down so it wants to ripen the fruit as much as you do. When we prune the tops of our plants, we are giving the plant permission to focus on the growth that is already there instead of producing new growth.
Unfortunately, our plants will not be able to ripen all of those little pepper babies before the cold weather comes, so we need to be selective in what we ask the plant to focus on. This is going to mean some big decisions about which fruit to keep and which to prune, as well as excess stems and flowers.
Deciding how many main stems to keep on your pepper plants can affect your yield and fruit size as it directly affects where the plant will put its energy.
Have a good look at your plant and take note of how many fruits are on the various stems and how big these fruits are. Now I will not lie to you, the next part is going to be the worst bit, I want you to decide which of those fruits are large enough that they have a good chance of ripening before the cold weather comes in. Try to be strict with yourself here as the more fruit there is for the plant to ripen, the more chance there is that it will not be able to progress all those peppers through to perfection.
Be brutal: any small peppers, prune them. Only leave the larger fruits, again allowing the plant to direct its energy into ripening what is on the plant, rather than trying to grow more. You should also do this same action with flowers. Just as any small peppers are unlikely to grow to full size and ripen now, any flowers will only create more small peppers which will not have time to grow fully.
As September appears, so does our anxiety about how long we may have left in our summer season and whether our crops will fully ripen in time. I have some tricks you can try to give Mother Nature a hand.
I want to add a little point about harvesting to end this article because even though the focus has been on getting as much ripe fruit as possible, sweet peppers can of course be eaten while they are still green. So do not be disheartened if your plant does not produce as many of those brightly coloured fruits as you had hoped for, instead look at your harvest as including all of those larger green peppers too.
Congratulations, peppers to be proud of!
Eli Appleby-Donald, one half of 'In the Garden With Eli and Kate' tends an urban garden in East Lothian which she has managed to make beautiful and productive. She considers herself a perpetual learner gardener, and has spent the last 11 years learning by experience, success, and failure.
Eli is a digital education guru for a local university by day, and due to the lack of good information about growing in Scotland when she started gardening, she decided it was time to put those skills into action to correct this. She now regularly blogs and vlogs about gardening on YouTube where she has hundreds of videos all about her gardening journey and her top tips, as well as appearing as a guest on others worldwide.
You can find out more about Eli and all the fun of creating your own suburban garden paradise on either her YouTube channel, her website or instagram.
