Abstract: A chili harvester in the form of a self propelled vehicle for movement along rows of chili pepper plants and includes spaced, opposed rotatably driven picking units. Each of the picking units is in the form of a plurality of vertically oriented spirally coiled pod picking rods. The spirally coiled rods are supported for lateral adjustment in relation to each other for varying the distance between opposed spirally coiled rods for optimizing the picking efficiency of the picking units and enabling the picking units to be adjusted to compensate for variations in picking conditions. The spirally coiled picking units are manually adjusted towards and away from each other to vary the spatial relation between the picking units.

Abstract: A chili harvester in the form of a vehicle that is self propelled for movement along rows of chili pepper plants and including rotatably driven picking units for removing chili pods from the plants and depositing them onto rearwardly and upwardly extending conveyors which deposit the chili pods and any leaves, stems or other trash material into a rotatable separating drum. The rotating separating drum is mounted and driven for rotation about an inclined axis with the chili pods and other material being deposited in the upper end thereof and migrating forwardly toward the lower end with trash and other material dropping between circumferentially spaced members which form the separating drum.