Photographs of this planting through the 2026 season, oldest first.
The photographs
Week of 1 JuneA Gatherer's Gold pepper on 6 June, eight or nine untoothed leaves so glossy that the light stands on them as hard white highlights, two near the crown still crumpled from expanding, with patchy greenhouse sun falling across the bench around it.Week of 6 JulyA Gatherer's Gold pepper on 9 July under a dusting of kaolin clay, the chalky white sitting on top of the blades in uneven droplets and splash-shaped runs among clear beads of water — bottle green in the shade below, yellow-green where hard sun hits the tips.Week of 27 JulyGatherer's Gold peppers on 30 July, four or five hanging together from one axil and already an even creamy yellow with no green left in them, one creased down its side, a blur of unripe green bell fruit crossing the near foreground in shaded light.Week of 3 AugustGatherer's Gold peppers on 4 August, eight blunt cones hanging at once in waxy butter yellow, warming to gold on the two nearest the lens and staying pale lime-cream on those in shade, their skins smooth and unmarked in hard low sun.Week of 3 AugustA Gatherer's Gold pepper on 5 August, ivory-cream and waxy from squared shoulder to a blunt three-lobed tip, with rain still standing in the shallow well around its stalk and grit caught in that water, a warmer buttery one behind it.Week of 3 AugustTwo Gatherer's Gold peppers on 6 August close in and filling the frame, the nearer creamy lemon and the one behind it deeper honey-gold, both waxy and squared at the shoulder with a scatter of faint rust freckles near their blunt tips.Week of 3 AugustA Gatherer's Gold pepper on 7 August, further along than any around it: apricot-orange across its squared four-lobed shoulder graduating down into deep butter-yellow at the base, waxy and glossy with tiny water beads caught along the top.Week of 3 AugustTwo Gatherer's Gold peppers on 9 August hanging shoulder to shoulder, the left creamy lemon with an apricot flush spreading down one flank and the right fully tangerine, and one slender scarlet pod from a different plant cutting in at the top.Week of 10 AugustGatherer's Gold peppers on 10 August seen from below against a blown-out white sky, the front one fully ripe tangerine and finely dimpled along its length, the one behind it still creamy lemon with a faint apricot blush on the shoulder.Week of 10 AugustA Gatherer's Gold pepper on 12 August, blocky-shouldered and creased twice down the near face, deep egg-yolk yellow flushed apricot on one shoulder and still green under its knobbed calyx, beaded all over in dull light after rain.Week of 17 AugustA Gatherer's Gold pepper on 17 August seen from above, egg-yolk yellow with apricot running down one flank and over the rounded tip, its calyx lobes fanned flat across the skin and flecked dark, each crease holding rain under a gray sky.
