Somehow this step never occurred to me. I was so busy trying to keep these plants alive and going (after so many seedlings have died and gone back to ground) that I’m surprised to see a tiny banana pepper plant that has a four or five inch green pepper already hanging from it.

Yay–something is growing in the yard, beyond the little clusters of hard green balls on my lemon and lime trees. It looks good (though I’ve never had a banana pepper before).

But now I’m gonna have to start some kind of reference journal for all these plants I’m planting and a schedule for when to pluck ’em.

Or do some just fall down or lay out and wait for you to nab ’em before they go bad?

That reminds me–I’d better do some protective work with my strawberry plants. If they start sprouting, those berries aren’t supposed to rest on the soil or else they’ll start to rot.

At least, that’s what I understand is supposed to happen.

And so I’ve hit one of the major hurdles with this “growing my own food” schtick: when to pick the food and where to store it.

Definitely need to read some more. Amazing how I spent all this time and energy trying to make things grow, and it didn’t occur to me that it might work in some respects.

I suppose I just need to keep on going and pay more careful attention.

And of course be sure which type of peppers I have, specifically. Mine aren’t ready for the picking yet, thank goodness. I have time to work on it all.