How and When to Harvest Jalapeños: Picking Tips
Jalapeños are easy to grow and among the most versatile hot peppers, with a warmth that spices up all kinds of summer dishes. To get the best flavor profile from your crop, gardening expert Katherine Rowe outlines when to pick the fruits, experimenting with various phases of development for bold attributes.
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Jalapeños bring their easy, flavorful goodness to summertime cuisine and beyond when dried, pickled, or ground. With a medium-hot spice and notes of citrus, the peppers energize any meal, from livening up fresh salsa to infusing grilled meats and vegetables.
Peppers are a crop to harvest at varying stages of development based on usage and taste preferences. When picking jalapeños, play with flavor and heat levels as they move through different colorations and ripening phases. The nightshades brim with a diversity of flavor profiles throughout their growth, from harvesting green to fully ripe to dried.
Jalapeños are compact, easy-to-grow summer crops that produce a big yield, even in small spaces. They suit containers and raised beds for low-maintenance growing. Keep jalapeño plants nearby for easy picking or a ready supply, and harvest them at the right time for the best flavor and storage!
Jalapeño Basics
Capsicum annuum ‘Jalapeño’ hails from Xalapa, Mexico, where it flourishes in warm, frost-free conditions. With 2500 to 5000 heat units on the Scoville scale, they measure as a medium-hot chile pepper. Scoville heat units (SHU) measure the capsaicin in a pepper. Invented by Wilbur Scoville in 1912, it’s a scale of how hot a pepper tastes.
Chiles are frost-sensitive and rely on warm air and soil temperatures for best growth. They grow easily from seed, soaking up summer sun to yield abundant fruits. While some are long-maturing at 100 days, jalapeños are usually harvested early and can be used at various stages of ripeness.
Optimal growing conditions for the easy-care, prolific peppers include:
- Full sun (six plus hours of sunlight daily) with protection from intense afternoon rays
- Organically rich, well-draining soil
- A slightly acidic to neutral pH near 6.2 to 7.0
- Warm temperatures for germination and growth (70-80°F or 21-27°C)
- Evenly moist soils with one to two inches of water per week (rainfall and irrigation)
Crops in the nightshade family, Solanaceae, benefit from annual rotation because they easily transmit pests and diseases. If you’re growing chiles in the ground, it helps to choose a spot where you haven’t grown other nightshades (eggplants, tomatoes, tomatillos, potatoes, and other peppers) in the past year for a clean plot.
Pick at Various Stages
When it comes to harvesting jalapeños, we often use them when they are green. These are actually immature, unripe peppers. Left on the plant, they mature to their full color and flavor. Green jalapenos are crisp and bright with fresh heat. Given time to develop, they become yellow, orange, and finally red (depending on the variety).
The heat within peppers comes from the compound capsaicin, a well-adapted plant defense that’s an irritant to pests that may graze the fruits. Mature jalapeños possess more capsaicin in their walls and are bolder, sweeter, and spicier than their younger counterparts. Walls become thin and less rigid, and flavor concentrates.
As a guideline for readiness, count out the days to mature fruits from your sowing date. The seed packet indicates this as “days to maturity,” and it gives a good indicator of when to expect harvest-ready fruits. Pick jalapeños in the earlier stages for classic heat and flavor.
The earliest peppers are ready when the shiny, deep green fruits are medium-sized, a bit plump, and firm under light pressure. As they ripen and transition to yellow, bright orange, and red, “huachinango” stage, pick them at any point when still mostly firm (though they’ll be softer than the green stage).
When To Harvest Jalapeños
Pick your peppers at peak ripeness to experience superlative heat and flavor nuances. When ripe, they’ll be crisp and begin to cork, or show light striations. The “stretch marks” indicate the fleshy interiors are expanding, meaning a burst of flavor awaits. Depending on the variety, fruits will show mature color, whether green, red, yellow, orange, or purple.
The more mature the fruit, the hotter it will be. Pick a bunch when they’re green, leaving others to mature. Experiment with the color phase that meets your best heat level and use. The colorful tones add vibrance to fresh dishes and relishes. Picking early also promotes additional flowering and fruiting, encouraging the annual to put more energy into reproduction (fruiting and seeding).
Too Early
Jalapeños bear good flavor with early picking, but harvesting too early means less heat, sweetness, and sometimes increased bitterness. Wait until peppers are medium to mature in size for the most culinary goodness.
To get closer to fully ripe, wait for the color to break slightly. Green will give way to shades of the mature varietal tone. Peppers showing color continue to ripen at room temperature indoors.
Too Late
Harvesting too late means the fruits sit on the plant, decreasing flowering and slowing production. The peppers begin to rot on the stem and can attract pests that may damage healthy fruits.
To store very ripe peppers, put them in the refrigerator to slow further ripening.
How To Pick
Capsicum has woody stems that are brittle and can break under tugging or pulling to pick the fruits. Because of their hefty fruit loads, tall varieties benefit from staking or cages for added support.
To harvest jalapeños, use clean, sharp shears, scissors, or a knife to cut the peppers free, and leave a short stem. Clip the stems with about ½ inch still attached to the pepper.
Make them Hotter
While peppers appreciate consistently moist soils, a bit of drought stress close to ripening results in hotter fruits, so if you want even more heat in your chile, withhold irrigation slightly as color transitions to red in the ripening phase.
A little forced stress is fine, but avoid letting the crops wilt or soil dry out too much. Prolonged drought or dry spells are counterproductive to ongoing yields.
Storage
Fresh peppers that you’ll use quickly can rest at room temperature in the kitchen. To store them a bit longer, place them in a paper bag in the crisper drawer for a few days and up to a week.
If you face the happy challenge of too many hot peppers to use fresh, plan to dry, pickle, or freeze them for lasting use. Dried chiles bring lasting heat, and you can grind them into chili flakes or powder. Red, ripe jalapeños dried and smoked are chiptoles with a rustic, rich, smoky taste.
Drying
To dry jalapeños, string the stems and hang them in a cool, dry place. You can also sun dry them during the day, heat them in the oven, or use a food dehydrator. When they wrinkle and have papery skin, the fruits are ready for storage in glass jars or airtight containers in a dark spot like a pantry or cabinet.
Once dry, toss them whole into cooked dishes. Grind or pound them for flaky or powdered spice. Smoke them to add to sauces for their chipotle flavor.
Freezing
Freezing peppers whole or chopped is an easy way to use them in future stir fries, soups, Mexican dishes, and you-name-it. Frozen hot peppers typically last for up to 8 months. Wash and dry the whole peppers and freeze them in bulk in an air-tight baggie or container.
Or, chop them and flash freeze the pieces before placing them altogether in a freezer bag or container. To flash freeze, wear gloves to cut the peppers, and spread the bits out on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Freeze them for a couple of hours before combining them into the final storage container. Flash freezing first keeps them easily separated for using over time (rather than a solid block).
Frequently Asked Questions
When are jalapeños ready to harvest?
The hot peppers are ready to harvest as immature green fruits and up to fully mature red peppers (depending on the variety, which can be yellow or purple, too). Pick them at various stages of development, avoiding too early or too late, to experience a changing flavor profile as they transition to bolder, spicier, and sweeter.
What happens if I don’t harvest ripe jalapeños?
Not picking the fruits leads to overloaded plants with weighty stems susceptible to breakage. Production and vigor slow as energy depletes. Early on, some growers thin the number of fruits for improved quality. Pick a few when they’re green, while others mature to promote additional flowering and fruit set.
