Harvest tally 2026: 1.9 kilograms from eleven plants
I weighed every pod this year as it came off the plant, on the kitchen scales to the nearest gram, and wrote the figures on the calendar by the back door. The season ran from the 14th of July, when the first jalapeño was big enough to pick, to the 10th of September, when I cleared the two habanero plants of everything that was orange. Eleven plants made it to fruit out of fourteen that went into the greenhouse.
The totals. Three jalapeño-type plants gave 742 grams between them, with the largest single plant at 318 grams and 41 pods. Two cayenne types gave 388 grams of long thin pods that are now hanging in strings over the cooker to dry. Two habanero types gave 296 grams, which sounds like little but is about 70 pods and more heat than this household will use in two years. One lemon-drop type gave 181 grams of small yellow pods with a sharp citrus smell. Two bird’s eye plants gave 164 grams of tiny pods, each one a job to pick. And one plant of a mild, thick-walled type that I grew for stuffing gave 129 grams from just six fruits. Total 1,900 grams, give or take the odd pod eaten in the greenhouse.
The three that failed: one jalapeño that dropped every flower in the hot week in June when the greenhouse hit 38 degrees before I got the shading up, one habanero that never got beyond 20 centimetres tall for reasons I still do not understand, and a cayenne that broke at the base when a cane shifted in the wind in August with a dozen green pods on it. The pods ripened indoors on the broken plant anyway, but I counted them separately and they came to 60 grams.
Greenhouse against windowsill, since I kept two jalapeños inside as a comparison: the windowsill plants gave 98 and 112 grams, roughly a third of their greenhouse siblings, with thinner walls and more flower drop. The light through a north-west kitchen window is simply not enough, however much I turn the pots. Next year the windowsill is for seedlings only, and I am going to try to get the shading on before the first hot week rather than after.