I harvested my first Fresno pepper 137 days after I set the seeds to germinate.  I had a couple of other Fresno peppers ripen to the point that they were ready to harvest a couple of weeks ago, but some critter  got to them before I did.  I’m not sure if it was a rabbit or a squirrel but they broke off a big chunk of two of the plants and chewed up the peppers that I was about ready to harvest.  They didn’t seem to actually eat them, so I imagine they didn’t like the taste.  This pepper could have stayed on the plant for a few more days to develop a little more, but I was impatient and wanted to get it before the little monsters decided to raid my garden again.

For future planning of when to set the seeds to germinate, I can think about counting back 130-140 days from when I want to harvest while also keeping in mind that I can’t keep a bunch of huge plants in the house when it’s too cold to put them out.  I’ll need to look back through my posts to when it started to be impractical to keep the plants inside.  That will give me another benchmark for when I should start them.