<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n12. Rotate crops<\/h3>\n\n\n\n When planning your garden layout, we recommend that you leave a quarter of your available growing space open when planting. Using this planting strategy allows you to rotate your crops every season, resulting in less disease, and higher yields. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rotation is necessary for a few reasons, with the first being that plants absorb nutrients from the soil \u2013 so, you\u2019ll need to replenish that after every season, and rotating helps you keep your crops well-fed. By resting a section of your garden every season, you allow it to deal with the stress of production while keeping perennial species healthy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Plants that experience fungal diseases may release the pathogens into the soil during the course of the season, contaminating any future crops planted at the same site. In some cases, pathogens can remain in the ground for years, even with no available water. Rotating allows you to rehabilitate the area after every season while giving your second crop fertile soil in which to grow and fruit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n13. Harvesting Tips<\/h3>\n\n\n\n Most garden variety green and sweet peppers mature anywhere between 60 to 90-days. Hot peppers like habanero and jalapeno can take up to 190-days, depending on the variety. Red peppers will start to develop their color in the final two weeks of maturing, but they will be green until this stage.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The longer you leave the pepper, the redder it gets. Yellow peppers change in much the same manner but take a few weeks longer than red peppers to reach maturity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Red and orange or yellow peppers are sweeter than green peppers, due to the additional sugars developed in the flesh of the fruit while it grows for those extra few weeks. This sweet taste makes them the more popular variety for use in fresh salads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When you go to remove the peppers from the plant, cut them off with pruning scissors. If you try to pluck them, it may result in stress damage that slows the fruiting process as the plant recovers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n14. Storing Peppers<\/h3>\n\n\n\n Your pepper plants should give you anywhere between 3 to four harvests over the course of a season depending on the growing conditions and starting date of the seeds. After each fruiting, we recommend you don\u2019t rinse your peppers after harvest. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dust of the excess dirt and then wrap the pepper in a paper towel, and tore in Tupperware in the fridge for up to 10 days. You\u2019ll know it\u2019s time to throw out your peppers when they start to get limp and soft. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Peppers don\u2019t keep in root cellars and don\u2019t bother trying to freeze your harvest, as blanching ruins peppers. You can sun-dry spicy chilies like birds-eye and habanero. We love pickling our jalapeno harvest every year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Try to consume them in fresh salads as quickly as you can. We like to grow tomato, lettuce, and onion without pepper varieties, for a fast-harvesting salad that\u2019s great in the summertime. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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