Gildo’s Paso Robles Pepper Strip: Midseason Update

Back on April 15th I posted a little piece and some photos about my new pepper strip that I grow in a small area of our backyard each year. Being that we live in the Southern California/Central Coast growing region, I’m able to put plants in the ground in the early Spring without having to worry about late season snow and/or frost. Things looked good for the first two weeks until I noticed that our cat had decided to start using an area of the strip as his new toilet. Although I caught the problem early on, he did manage to wreak havoc on one of the Bhut Jolokias and it lost all of it’s leaves and was reduced to nothing more than a withered little one-inch stem. Fortunately, with some careful nursing and TLC, I managed to save it and it’s now doing quite well and just started to flower.

This year we planted an assortment of peppers including Bhut Jolokia, Red Savinaâ„¢ habanero, chocolate habanero, peter pepper, Bishop’s crown, Brazilian starfish, Bulgarian carrot, yellow squash, billygoat, and cherry bomb. So far we’ve had fruit from the cherry bomb, Bulgarian carrot and the yellow squash plants. As far as yield and taste is concerned, the cherry bomb has been amazing, so far producing about two pounds of really tasty peppers. The Brazilian Starfish is in a close second and is completely loaded with immature fruit that should be ripe and ready to be picked in about two weeks. The chocolate habanero is third and the peter pepper a solid fourth in upcoming yield and should also be ready to pick in about two weeks. The Bhut Jolokias however have just recently flowered as they are late Summer producers, so by September/October we should have a mess of them as well. The rest of the peppers are in various stages of flowering with some young fruit and should be ready to pick in another few weeks.

Anyone who grows their own peppers knows how exciting it is to finally see a little tiny pepper appear in amongst the leaves and how fun it is to finally get to pick and eat what you grew. I’ll post a wrap-up at the end of the growing season and let you know how it all went in the end.