Hello Hive
This year has been a year for 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ pepper blessing. While we have been lamenting concerning the poor yield from other crops, peppers have taking a turn to surprise all the farmers that have grown this year.
The nursery stage for pepper growth often commence in the March and by that time we often plant and water in peppers in nursery using buckets. We do not have the spraying cans useful for such purpose. After about 6week to two months of nursery we them move our peppers to the farms. That is often done in the months of June/July. Substantial rainfall and moisture is needed to sustain the peppers in the farm. After they start growing well, pepper can survive any dey condition for a long time, no wonder the growth of pepper was not affected by the July drought we experienced this year. From every direction our farmers here are having a bountiful harvest of pepper.
My late mum is one among the women here that love to grow pepper 🌶️🌶️🌶️ but unlike the others we often grow the chilli pepper compared to the scotch bonnet. Chilli pepper are easy to preserve compared to the other ones. We only sun dry and then store them in sac, but ever since her demise I haven't been able to grow some of the crops she loves to grow.
There is usually a challenge with harvesting pepper; even after using a glove for the harvest, our hands and palms always remain hot and peppery for days. This discomfort makes me shy away from growing chili.
Scotch bonnet, on the other hand, is easy to harvest and doesn't hurt much. While we have gone for neighbors harvest, they were worried that the lots of harvest will get damaged if the peppers are not properly preserved.
Since a lot of other farmers are also harvesting and bringing their own peppers to the market for sale, there is a whole lot of scotch bonnet in circulation now that we cannot make a profit selling this pepper at this time.
We resulted to the search for the best idea or methods to preserve our pepper.
I have some free time this week since my beans and rice are all patiently awaiting harvest. I can join them with the pepper harvest and preservation.
We brought lots and lots of scotch bonnet home.
After drying the peppers in the sun, we realized that they were going bad faster than they were meant to dry up and get preserved.
I got the idea that we should cut and open up the peppers first before sun-drying them. This makes them dry faster and even retain their ripe red colors even after drying
Then, on the other hand, a faster preservation method is for us to preheat the peppers first so that their moisture contents can evaporate before sun drying. This makes the peppers dry up faster.
The same methods can also be applicable to tomatoes. Whenever we have crops that are plentiful and ok in their seasons, the best thing to do is to preserve enough of them for the latter seasons of the year when they will be out of season.
Sometimes I wish that there are preservation methods for vegetables too, most especially water leaves.
Having gotten some water leaves from the farms this weekend, it is absolutely annoying to see that those leaves get spoilt within just 48 hours. They have gone rotten and smelly just within that time frame. For now, we are only able to harvest and preserve peppers.