Seed Saving - Quadrato asti Giallo

A couple of years ago, we grew out Napoleon Sweet bell peppers for Seed Savers, in Decorah.  It was a good experience, even if the season was a bit marred by the removal of my kidney early in the year.  The good news was, we did come up with some good seed production that year that had a high (95%) germination rate when we tested.  

We decided to give it another try in 2023 and grew out some Quadrato asti Giallo peppers and you can see some of the results above.

This time I was able to spend more time selecting plants and being more intentional with removing plants that weren't showing the best qualities for this particular heirloom bell pepper.  At the seedling stage we culled about 20% of the plants for various reasons and another 20% did not get transplanted because they were not showing the same vigor or they exhibited a growth pattern I did not like.

A few more were removed when the fruits weren't what we were looking for - and then I waited for the harvest.

When we grew the Napoleon Sweets, we took those red peppers to the Jorgensen Plaza kitchen and they cored them and returned the cap with attached seeds to us.  In return, they got inexpensive, Certified Organic, red bell peppers they could use fresh or freeze for later use.  This time, we cut them ourselves and sold the cut peppers to interested persons.  The rest we did not sell went to the chickens or the compost.  

Sometimes, you just have to do what you have time and energy to do.

I have to admit that I liked the taste of the Quadratos in this batch and I was pretty happy with the quality of the fruit in the harvest.  The next step is to do our germination test.  If it is acceptable, the seeds will go to Seed Savers to fulfill the contract.  If not?  We'll have to consider what might have happened with the pollination and go from there.

Hopefully, we will have the opportunity to grow more out for seed in 2024.  This is the sort of thing where a little success breeds confidence and a couple of repetitions means we've had a chance to improve some of the processes.

I suspect, even if we don't have a contract for 2024, we're going to be growing a few more things for seed - maybe for ourselves, maybe for others.  

We'll see.  But, we've got some success to stand on - and that's never a bad thing.