My first bell peppers

enchant · September 7, 2013

I'm growing bell peppers for the first time. Due to some issues, I got a late start planting the seeds (may 1), so everything got delayed. The crop was strange. Out of four plants, I only got one pepper initially, and it appeared fully grown around the beginning of August. I wanted to see it change color to red or yellow, so I left it on the vine. It took an entire month before I saw any color change at all, but it wasn't the bright red. It was a dark maroon, almost like it was going bad, but it still felt very solid. So I picked it.

But now that it's been sitting on my counter a couple days, it's definitely starting to turn the bright red color I was expecting. Do they not turn until you harvest them? I'm getting a lot more of them coming in now (but the biggest are only 2" tall at this point), and I'd like to know if I can pick them as soon as they're full size if I want them to turn red.

September 7, 2013	#1
enchant Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Jul 2011 Location: Boston, MA Posts: 142	My first bell peppers I'm growing bell peppers for the first time. Due to some issues, I got a late start planting the seeds (may 1), so everything got delayed. The crop was strange. Out of four plants, I only got one pepper initially, and it appeared fully grown around the beginning of August. I wanted to see it change color to red or yellow, so I left it on the vine. It took an entire month before I saw any color change at all, but it wasn't the bright red. It was a dark maroon, almost like it was going bad, but it still felt very solid. So I picked it. But now that it's been sitting on my counter a couple days, it's definitely starting to turn the bright red color I was expecting. Do they not turn until you harvest them? I'm getting a lot more of them coming in now (but the biggest are only 2" tall at this point), and I'd like to know if I can pick them as soon as they're full size if I want them to turn red.