Are My Serranos Ready To Harvest?

17 years ago

This is my first time growing peppers and I'm not sure when to harvest them. My serrano plant is pretty measly but it does have 3 decent sized peppers (one isn't shown in the picture). I would say the two shown are close to two inches long and the other is about one inch long. They have each turned bright red in the last week or two.

Also, I'm pretty sure my plant isn't going to be able to handle any new peppers since it is so small. I thought that if maybe I went ahead and picked these three, I would still have time to maybe get a few more serranos out of this season. Thanks for any help you can provide!

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Comments (8)

pepper_d0g
17 years ago
Hi Arkcard,
Although I am not an expert those do not look like serranos to me. At least they don't look like mine which are also from Bonnie. Maybe someone else on the forum can ID them for sure. In any case, if they were mine I would pick them now since they are so red. Enjoy them!
chillilover
17 years ago
They look similar to serannos but fatter on the end. Maybe they were a cross even though they were store bought. Also, in my opinion I would have picked the early bud/flowers until the plant grew larger. You would have ended up with tons more peppers. You wasted quite a bit of time letting those three grow and ripen. If you picked then the plant would have grown a lot in a few weeks put out maybe 30 to 50 peppers then you could have let them ripen. It would have only been a few more weeks but have gotten you a lot of peppers.
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buzzsaw8
17 years ago
Yep, pick 'em. You can also eat serrano's when they're green, which is what they commonly use in salsa.
chillilover
17 years ago
Let you soil dry out before watering too. Peppers hate to be waterlogged.
arkcard
Original Author
17 years ago
I probably should have just left the things in the ground. Just tried a bite of one and it was much hotter than I expected. I guess eating my Habaneros is out of the question now. I'll have to mix them in with some salsa or something to balance out the heat.
medcave
17 years ago
"Let you soil dry out before watering too. Peppers hate to be waterlogged."

Within reason. I've noticed that some that ask for help here tend to have taken the advice to extremes... both with watering and feeding.

Peppers do like *some* moisture, and the difference between just enough and nearly dead is about 12 hours in the high heat some areas (like Tx and Ok) are experiencing right now.
tn_veggie_gardner
17 years ago
Yea...what medcave said. Peppers like dry soil, but not too dry. Use a day when you're home & it's sunny to monitor them for a test of sorts. Plan it so their soil is pretty dry in the morning. Watch them closely throughout the day. Once they start to wilt even the slightest (measure leaf span if u want), check to see what the soil moisture is like (so you know when to water from then on) & then water them.
juicyj
17 years ago
as a general rule of thumb if a pepper turns red its ready to eat...alot of times even before then