Succession Planting and Harvesting the First Peppers

Village Farm Team,

We’ve officially started harvesting our peppers! The first harvest was made up of shishito, Jalafuego (a jalapeno variety), and hot banana peppers. These peppers are all great candidates for pickling but they can also be used in stir fries or salsas. In the photo below you can see a comparison of the mild shishito pepper on the left and the fiery Jalafuego on the right. We expect to add both the Hungarian Hot Wax and Corbacci peppers to the harvest list this week as they near maturation. And, coming in the next few weeks, we’ll have more of our sweet peppers like Jimmy Nardello and Cornito Giallo.

Succession planting continues this week with more Sugar Baby watermelons going in the ground along with Sugar Cube muskmelons. We also transplanted more zucchini and summer squash varieties in addition to Row 7’s 898 butternut squash and a couple of heat-tolerant cucumber varieties like Suyo Long and Striped Armenian. Though it looks and tastes like a cucumber, the Striped Armenian, Cucumis melo, is technically a melon! It has a curved shape and distinct dark and light green stripes.

Remember the Ayote and Nanticoke winter squash varieties we planted back in March as an experiment? They’re both doing really well! Our goal with this squash experiment is to see how they perform in our climate and potentially save the seeds of those that have the best flavor and healthiest growing habit. Both of the varieties have started setting fruit so we’re eager to see how they mature and eventually, how they taste. You can see one of the Nanticoke squash in the photo below.