PEPPERS FOR CANNING AND DRYING 237 



a bruised pod is liable to decay unless dried at once. If peppers 

 are to be dried on strings, have them dumped on a table or on the 

 ground, as you prefer. Allow 24 to 48 hours for stems to wilt 

 after gathering before they are put on the string. This work is 

 done by running a twine through the stem of each chile, the twine 

 to be Wy 2 to 11 feet, and same may be hung on a scaffold to dry 

 or put into especially made evaporators. Some growers report 

 favorably on drying their crop on trays instead of on twine. Dur- 

 ing recent years most of the drying has been done by evaporators, 

 which is accomplished by artificial heat in six or eight days. 



If an early frost should catch the plants pick off all the fruit 

 both ripe and green. If spread on trays in a dry, cool place much 

 of the green fruit will ripen. 



Soils for the Commercial Crop. Although peppers can be suc- 

 cessfully grown in any good garden soil, it is important for the 

 field crop to choose deep, rich, sandy loam, or sediment soil, which 

 will not bake very rapidly. The young plants must be set in damp 

 soil and if land should easily bake it will become hard and will dry 

 out more readily about the young plant and the growth will be very 

 slow. It is not wise to grow more than two crops of peppers on 

 even the best of soils without fertilizing very liberally. Cover crops 

 plowed under are found very profitable. 



The Crop for Canning and Drying. At Garden Grove in 

 Orange county in 1914 Allen Brothers, who grew forty of the esti- 

 mated 750 acres in Orange county and give the following outline 

 of the product, sold both green for canning and dried for other 

 uses. The yield of green peppers has never been less than five tons 

 per acre and has been as high as fifteen tons, averaging about nine 

 tons green besides the ones left to ripen. Very many growers con- 

 tract their crops to the canners early in the season. 



Green peppers which are not suitable for the canneries or 

 which are missed by the pickers during the short time they are 

 good for canning, are allowed to ripen and are then artificially 

 dried. If all are allowed to ripen, the dried crop is 1500 to 3000 

 pounds per acre and they sell at seven to nineteen cents per pound, 

 averaging about ten cents. Often the crop is sold green and less 

 than 500 pounds per acre are dried. A large part of this 500 pounds 

 is that part of the crop which is green when frost kills the plants 

 in November to February. They are dried on trays and sold at 

 24 cents to be ground up for chicken feed. 



When the whole crop is dried they are hung up in a shed over 

 dry or steam heat five to seven days. The old custom of drying 

 them in the sun is not now common because many of the ripe pep- 

 pers rot before they dry that way. Some of them are ready to 

 pick November 1, and were picked one season for drying until 

 February 15, which is exceptional. 



In the sheltered foothills, they pick green ones all the year 

 around. In the level country about Los Angeles, green peppers 



