Fall Peppers

A couple of different posts have mentioned that once I pick peppers they tend to start blooming again to try to make another crop. I'm not sure why this happens other than the need everything has to reproduce for the next growing season. Here are some pictures:

First the Tabasco peppers. Here you can see everything from blooms, tiny peppers just getting started, the yellow full sized pepper that is ripening, and the fully ripe red-orange pepper. I'll be able to pick fresh peppers from here right up to the first heavy frost that will kill the plant back.

The cayenne pepper below is doing the same thing. Cayenne peppers are larger so there aren't as many peppers on the plant but here you can still see several new blooms trying to keep going. Remember, I just picked these peppers about 2 weeks ago to make the hot sauce I told you about in Making Hot Sauce.

Even the bell pepper is trying to get in on the act. This pepper is only about the diameter of a dime so time will tell if it gets large enough to eat. The late season bell peppers I get are normally pretty small but loaded with flavor.

The tomatoes are coming to an end for the season, so I've been removing the plants. They tend to grow very large and cover up other plants in the garden. Imagine my surprise when I found this bell pepper buried under several tomato limbs. It's hard to tell in the photo but this is a nice sized pepper, almost as large as my fist. In the background of the photo there may even be another one that I had not seen before, another surprise.

There you have it, a small tour of the peppers growing outback.