Jeff Favelle October 18th, 2022
Fully ripened peppers right off the plant, hot or sweet, are a summer joy we look forward to every year. Max taste and max nutrition can happen only when that fruit (yes, peppers are a fruit!) has fully matured .
Sometimes though, that’s easier said than done. Either we planted late, or the summer wasn’t warm enough, or fall is creeping in and our peppers are still green and small and underdeveloped.
And unlike their cousin the tomato, peppers cannot be ripened off the vine with things such as ethylene gas. So what can we do? Well, I have three things for you to try that can expedite the ripening process for your peppers, ensuring you get the fruit you worked so hard for all year.
As a fruit, peppers arise from the flowers of the plant roughly a month after the first few sets of true leaves have formed and the plants have become small bushes. Each flower, once pollinated, represents one pepper.
Normally, the peppers grow and elongate and take their shape over the coming month to 6 weeks, becoming full size before ripening. After stalling in growth, it is then that peppers start to turn their mature color of red, orange, yellow, purple, black, or a shade of green.
Sometimes though, that process stalls or it happens too late. The nights turn cold and days begin to shorten. The pepper plant’s ability to ripen that fruit gets less and less and the worry is the fruit will never mature. What can we do?
The first thing to immediately do is to cut off all flowers when there either 1) a sufficient amount of fruit on the plant, or 2) there’s only 6 to 8 weeks before the night time temperatures approach 40F (5C). Flowers and smaller developing fruit are a drain on the plant. Resources allocated to them will most certainly stall or slow the ripening of the larger fruit on the plant. There’s only so much energy to go around so you want to direct it to the fruit that has the most chance of being successful.
Second, is to harvest! More fruit begets more fruit. Just as flowers are a drain on the plant, so are the peppers that are already ripe just sitting there. Pick them off as soon as they ripen, giving the next batch a greater chance at maturing and doing it faster.
Lastly, the third way to ripen peppers faster is nutrient balance. While we can’t control temperature or daylength outdoors, we can control the elements and minerals that contribute to the pepper fruit’s success. Phosphorus (P) and Potassium (K) are most definitely required to get pepper fruit to ripen, but its in relation to Nitrogen (N) that’s the key. Too much relative Nitrogen will stimulate you pepper plants to create and support more foliage….at the expense of fruit creation and fruit ripening. Keep the nutrient loads balanced for maximum ripening speed, especially in the latter 1/3 of the plant’s life cycle.
Peppers are one of the most popular backyard crops to grow, but it can be frustrating to put all that work together, only to get peppers that never ripen. By implementing these three strategies, you’ll give yourself the best chance at the most pepper success.