I had pretty much given up on it actually producing any peppers (it produced many flowers, but these never turned into anything) until a friend from work informed me that the flowers needed to be pollinated. In hindsight, it was a bit obvious - how else do plants fruit?
So, I spent the next week helping the pepper plant to have sex with itself. This isn't as kinky as it sounds, and just involved rubbing some pollen onto a cotton bud from one flower and brushing it onto the anthers of another flower. Less than two weeks later, a small green bud had formed where a dying flower was.
A few weeks later, we were able to harvest our first (and only!) pepper. We ate it raw with a homemade fish pie and it was amazing! It makes such a difference growing your own. The store bought ones taste very watery by comparasion. We're hoping to get more peppers from it next year, but I think producing its one pepper took a lot out of it as it's going a bit yellow around the leaves. Hopefully it will recover over the months.
The tiny but tasty pepper!
A very shiny picture of the pepper's insides.
3 comments:
We grew our own cumcumbers and tomatoes last year and they made the store bought ones seem so tough and tasteless. We didn't get around to planting anything this year (the awful weather put us off doing anything in the garden), but we plan to be better organised and grow more again next year. It's fun as much as anything else and so satisfying to know you grew it yourself.
This is amazing! Good job little pepper plant!
It was really satisfying growing our own! I might even designate a dog-free patch in the garden when we move so I can grow some more things.
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