Poblano Pepper Plant: When to Harvest Poblano Peppers

Poblano pepper plants (Capsicum annuum) are vegetable plants that sprout dark green peppers, eventually ripening into a red color. Their name derives from the state of Puebla, a region in Mexico where people first cultivated and grew these plants. The growing season for poblano peppers lasts a little over two months, during which the peppers turn from green to red poblanos. The peppers feature prominently in both Mexican and Thai cuisine, and their nutritional profile includes capsaicin, potassium, vitamin A, and vitamin C.

Poblanos are not particularly hot peppers. Their mild heat is slightly hotter than that of Anaheim peppers, bell peppers, and banana peppers, but poblanos are not as hot as serrano or jalapeño peppers. Poblanos fall between one thousand and two thousand Scoville heat units (SHU) on the Scoville scale—a ranking system for the heat of peppers. Contrast this with other popular pepper varieties: Jalapeños rank around three thousand to eight thousand, cayenne peppers range between thirty thousand and fifty thousand, and habaneros reach heights above one hundred thousand of the same units.

Poblano pepper plants are easy to grow under the right conditions. Follow these seven tips to care for and grow these peppers:

1. 1. Add organic matter. Pad out your poblano plant area with some mulch to hamper weeds and encourage healthy growth for your vegetables. Use organic fertilizer to feed the plants after about a month and a half in the soil.
2. 2. Fend off pests. Poblano pepper plants are prone to dealing with aphids, cutworms, and hornworms. Keep an eye out for these insect assailants and take an insecticide to your plants if they start to become a nuisance.
3. 3. Give them light. Growing peppers like this requires as much full sun as you can possibly get. They thrive in both heat and light, so make sure you leave the windows open if they’re indoors or plant them in a very sunny area in your garden.
4. 4. Harvest peppers as they grow. Harvesting poblano peppers as they grow helps the plants to continue sprouting healthy peppers. It’s inadvisable to remove all the vegetables, but try picking poblano peppers off the plants occasionally to redirect energy into the growing process overall. This will ensure your final crop is full and healthy.
5. 5. Keep the soil moist. Make sure there’s adequate soil moisture for your plants without water-logging their environment. Water them when the soil looks dry, but otherwise leave them to enjoy the natural moisture in the ground.
6. 6. Mind the climate. Poblano pepper seeds are not very hardy, so make sure you plant them at least two or three months before the last frost date of the year. Ideally, nighttime temperatures shouldn’t drop below 60 degrees Fahrenheit or so. In fact, it might be best to plant them indoors and supplement them with a heat mat if you want them to survive to the next year.
7. 7. Space the plants out. These plants can get very big very fast. If you’re planting them outdoors, make sure each individual plant has about three or four feet of space around it in every direction. If you’re planting them indoors, use gallon pots for each plant. In either case, be ready to prune the plants with shears to keep them from becoming too unwieldy.

If you grow a poblano pepper plant and harvest its chiles, you can use the peppers in culinary dishes. Consider these three basic poblano pepper recipe ideas:

1. 1. Chiles rellenos: Chefs often use stuffed poblanos as the basis for chiles rellenos dishes. Fill these stuffed peppers with cream cheese, meat, and other zesty ingredients to bolster, counterbalance, and complement the innate flavor and spice of the plants themselves.
2. 2. Dried ancho chilis: Ripened, red poblano peppers become ancho peppers once they are dry. These dried ancho peppers make for a tasty snack or can be a useful ingredient in ground chili powder.
3. 3. Mole sauce: There are many different variations of this thick, spicy Mexican sauce recipe. For instance, guacamole is a mole sauce made with avocado. If you see a sauce labeled mole poblano, you can be certain that this pepper was the central ingredient.

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