I guess it helps to know what I want:

Paprika, Cayenne - dried and ground - spice.
Same for a couple others.
Jimmy Nardello - roasted and sweet for taquito or something like that.
I dunno about the black hungarian. Gonna taste those, first. Maybe fresh and dried if I get enough.

Rain? What rain?

For any and all peppers, you can harvest and use them at any size and color, particularly for fresh eating.

I prefer to let most peppers get to their full mature color (which for most of the varieties I grow is red, though habaneros ripen to orange).

With peppers that I intend to dehydrate and then grind to a power or cut into flakes, I always let them mature to their full ripe red color. Once peppers are their ripe color, you need to process them soon after they are harvested because they will go bad quickly since they're already fully ripened.

here I am all ready to process powdered goodies and I've no dehydrator. I should prolly start there. lol

Can you dehydrate them in the oven on a very low temp?

Actually, I think so. I think it might alter the taste. I suppose, sometimes, that could be a good alteration depending on the pepper. I might figure out a way to sun dry them. I'd like that. I could try both!

I have the jimmy nardellos and black Hungarian. I have no clue either except that the Hungarian are black now. I have been gone for 12 days and saw my garden and I have so much weeding to do I may never find my pepper plants

They might not make it to dehydration. I mean, I have a few tomatoes ripening and all these glorious peppers hanging around. My mouth waters and my mind thinks of a hot seasoned cast iron skillet, drops of olive oil, a handful of pungent diced fresh onions onions tossed in there, succulent sweet and spicy sliced peppers and juicy diced fresh tomatoes ....

See? There I go again.

Paprika! Those should be dried. Yup.

When we went to garden I told littleman oh my look at the weeds, he said really seriously "oh gwanny my babies are bery sad". me too. I took a chance leaving it that long but I didn't have a choice so I will just put on mud boots and get to pulling. most of them are 3-4 foot already.

Bon I wish I could eat peppers again. some day I will enjoy all these varieties I am trying. And tomatoes and potatoes and ......

Bon, Just keep harvesting those peppers and using them. Mine produce a harvest from June through November, so that we have all we want for fresh eating and tons more for preservation.

I harvest the earliest fruits green because they have formed while the plants are still pretty small and they do suck up a lot of the plants' energy while maturing. I harvest them green so that the plant can put more energy back into growing, blooming and forming more peppers. I usually don't start letting peppers stay on the plant long enough to start turning red until late July after we've had plenty of green peppers to eat. So far this year, I've only harvested green ones and near the end of this month I'll start leaving some of them on the plant long enough to turn red. No matter what I do, we get far more than we can eat fresh anyway so you really cannot go wrong no matter when you harvest. Pepper plants that are even half-way happy here will produce like gangbusters, and all this rain ought to make it a great pepper year, at least for whatever plants have survived the flooding and the waterlogged roots.

Kim, Your little man is too little to weed on his own now, but in a few years he'll be an incredible helper because he already understands how much happier his plants are when they aren't having to compete with weeds.

I hope you'll be able to return to eating nightshade family veggies too. They're my favorites, although that doesn't mean I don't love a lot of other veggies as well. A person might be able to find watermelons and cantaloupes/muskmelons in stores in the summer that do have great flavor, but those melons still cannot compare to fresh melons from the garden. I replaced onion plants with tiny watermelon plants back in mid-June and now have medium-sized melon plants with multiple blossoms. Since I planted late, the melon harvest will be later than usual, but it still will be tasty.

Dawn

Kim, how sweet! Happy mudding to you. I understand, though. I'm getting ready to buy my 2nd pair of tennies, this year as I cannot wear regular mud boots.

Okay, Dawn. I'm gonna try to just enjoy this process and not overthink things.... (yeah. Right)

I have a hard time with mud boots too. I cant wear them too long.
Good luck not overthinking, that is my problem. Since I have no clue what I am doing here I study and think and plot and plan then occasionally throw caution to the wind and enjoy.

Bon, I am not overly fond of mud boots, but sometimes I wear them. My favorite mud boots aren't even boots---they are Crocs. Not the crocs that have holes in them because fire ants and scorpions bite me through the holes. I have some that are solid with no holes. They're my favorite outdoor shoes---just hose them off and you're good to go. I also wear some black leather steel-toed workboots that have a very thick sole and are about ankle high. Well, they are supposed to be black and originally they were, but they stay constantly coated in reddish mud so they aren't as black as they used to be.

Kim, I overthink everything when I am not physically out there in the garden. I think and I dream and I plan, and then I overthink, overdream and overplan. Then, I walk into the garden and that overthinking flies right out the window. I have noticed that once I am out there, I operate more intuitively and not so much intellectually. I think that can be both good and bad, but my intuition rarely lets me down, so I go with it. I think that is pretty much the same as you occasionally throwing caution to the wind.

Dawn

Dawn, I find much lofty thinking washes away with the sweat of the brow when putting them into action. "Aw, screw that idea." hahaha

yes it is. I get in the garden and everything gets rearranged according to what works for us at the time. I have learned so much about what doesn't work that next year ought to be even better. I have learned to go against the norm, Thank you Dawn, and try new things. And many visitors say "why I didn't know you could grow_______ here" Its a lot of fun to show longtimers to think outside the box. I hope to have a successful fall garden too but with this move and new job I am not sure how that will go.
That's true Bon. it sounds good in the books or theory but sometimes the energy level doesn't match

Bon, Me too! I find all the grand plans of winter can melt away in the summer heat and humidity, and I push some of those plans ahead to "next year".

Kim, I try to ignore the folks who say "you can't do that" or "you can't grow that here" because I'm stubborn enough to try to do it anyway. I had to try growing rhubarb many different ways before I found success with it here. Do I love rhubarb or particularly even care whether it grows here or not? No, but Tim loves it, so I grow it for him. Now, if I have tried to grow something for 3-5 years without success, maybe I throw in the towel and decided that you really can't grow "that" here, but there's very few things that won't grow here at some time of the year....we just have to experiment and figure out how to make it work.

There's a couple of things I don't bother with---blueberries are a perfect example. They need acidic soil and it helps them if you can get them acidic water. With highly alkaline soil and highly alkaline local water, there's just no way I could do it. Even in containers or in raised beds filled entirely with an imported, acidic growing medium, I'd still have to pH-adjust the water every time I watered and I'm just not willing to do that. It wouldn't be so bad in a year with plentiful rainfall, but most years, we do not have plentiful rainfall.

I've also found that some things that don't do well here at all in hot dry years are entirely different in cooler, wetter years, so part of the fun of gardening is figuring out if it is going to be a wet year and if I should plant accordingly.

Dawn