How to Harvest & Store Peppers

Video Transcript

"Hi I am Jarret from Stone Soup Farm, and this how to harvest and store peppers. The pepper plant here is a nice, little, bushy plant that will hold its peppers for you. The pepper plant is not frost-hardy, so make sure you get your peppers out before it frosts or you will lose them. The pepper plant, when it forms the pepper originally, it will be small and thin-walled, and a good way to tell if a pepper is ready to harvest is you give it a squeeze. If you squeeze a very small one like this, you will notice that you will feel that it indents quite easily. With a larger more mature pepper you can squeeze and it is really pretty stiff when it is on the plant, so that is ready to harvest now, it is nice and thick-walled. If you leave the pepper on, most peppers are going to be green like this when they form, if you leave it on the plant, eventually it will ripen and peppers will ripen to different colors. This variety right here ripens yellow. There are other varieties that will also start green and will ripen to red, orange, even purple or white or black or brown. There is a whole bunch of different varieties of peppers and it is worth trying a bunch to see which grows best in your area and which tastes the best to you. Once you have harvested the pepper, it is best to keep it in the fridge right away, and as long as you can. If you want to store the pepper long-term, than most people would either cut it up and freeze it, or you can also can it or pickle it. But those options usually will lose the pepper's texture, so try to eat them as much as you can when they are fresh. I am Jarrett from Stone Soup Farm, and that is how to harvest and store peppers."