Post harvest handling of green pepper

Sweet pepper can be stored by hanging them up in a shade or in a well ventilated store to dry them ready for grinding to a fine powder. 54For some large scale pepper producers, fresh fruits can be ground to make a liquid or fine powder pepper product. In this case, testing, labeling, packaging and storage facilities are essential to make this vegetable commercially sell and possible exportation achieved

 Markets and marketing

This greatly varies with the levels of production. Subsistence farmers rarely benefit economically from this vegetable due to low supplies to potential markets. However, large scale sweet pepper producers easily find market for this crop in processors who have ability to transform the utility product store it and later export it for a sizable income.

 Records and record keeping

Importance of crop records

• Used as a planning and budgeting tool.
• Accurately reflect profit or loss encountered during farming
• Can be used to access financial credit
• Important dates like planting, weeding and harvesting are recorded and followed in future
• Keeps a correct history of the farm

Crop record includes:

•  Total crop area grown
•  Quantity of inputs used e.g seeds, fertilizers etc
• Weeding, pruning, and other operations carried out
• Time spent on various activities-planting, weeding, harvesting in man hours
• Total crop yield together with selling value
• Pest/disease attack frequencies and their control costs

 Water-Use and management

As stated above peppers do not tolerate drought mainly because they have a very shallow root system. It is therefore essential to ensure plant water supply particularly at critical stages of the plant growth.

On-farm water conservation

There are two kinds of water available to a farmer -Surface water and underground water.

Water harvesting

• roof harvesting
• irrigation
• digging deep trenches and siphoning water to the surface
• water catchments-trapping

Soil erosion control

Through-mulching, contour ploughing, cut-off-drains, radical terracing, crop rotation etc

Designing simple irrigation techniques

• This can be done by using a supply from domestic water wash to the kitchen garden
• Also be done using simple plastic water 15 litre buckets suspending them over a vegetable garden with a supply of plastic pipes equipped with nozzles to allow continuous drip
• Digging trenches from the nearest swamp/river area to nearby vegetable field-surface irrigation
• A supply from the main farm reservoir tank collecting from roof harvesting to lower gradient gardens