Mountain Pepper Production: Berry Harvesting: Bronzewing Farm ® Tasmanian DEVIL ® Mountain Pepperberries are hand-harvested from the farm between April and June every year. Hand-harvesting is necessary because (a) the berries don't seem to want to drop off naturally (in our greenhouses we can have last season's berries still on the plant when the current season's berries are developing), and (b) it is important not to damage the new buds/growth which develop in the centre of the whorl of berries. This growth habit is called monopodial branching (see the lower- right photograph). Hand-harvesting is why Tasmanian Mountain Pepper is so expensive - there are around 4,000 berries in 1 kg of Mountain Pepper Berries (and this only gives you around 250 g of dried Mountain Pepper...). See our harvesting video here. The fresh pepperberries are graded to remove twigs and leaves but we typically leave the berry stems on those fruits where they haven't fallen off during harvest. We do this, because they add an 'authentic' look to our Tasmanian DEVIL ® peppercorns. Also the stems are just as 'hot' as the berries.

Alternate bearing/Biennial bearing: Mountain Pepper appears to produce big crops one year and small crops the next. For suppliers harvesting directly from the native bush, this is a big problem as their supplies are very limited on a regular basis. This biennial bearing is very typical of fruit crops such as apples, peaches, etc, and growers try to reduce this habit by thinning heavy crops either at flowering or at early fruit set. Our farmed production of Tasmanian DEVIL ® pepper means we can predict and plan for this. We also view the process differently - we have a baseline production..., and some years, we have a surplus of berries. In the future we will look at how pruning, fertilization and other crop management practices can reduce the extent of alternate bearing. The figure below shows the biennial nature of our ACR1 cultivar which was planted in 2010 and produced an initial crop in 2016.

Listen to Hilary Burdens’ ABC Rural Tasmania interview on Tasmanian Pepperberry harvesting: