5 Ways To Ripen Peppers Faster

We worked so hard to get to this point. We timed it all perfectly and we did everything right to achieve an epic harvest. And yet, with the summer waning, some of our peppers are still stalled out and the time is ticking. Peppers, unlike tomatoes, are non-climactric, meaning their ability to ripen off the vine is limited at best. And as if that wasn't enough, more than most crops, ripe peppers are sweeter, more nutritious, taste better and are easier to digest than the unripe ones. To get the most out of these plants that we've put all this work into means that we have to do everything possible to ripen that fruit. So today I got five things that we can do to speed up the ripening process for our favorite pepper varieties. Five things that we can do to help us pick the peppers we want now rather than later or not at all. Although taste is always subjective and different culinary uses call for different ripeness levels, it's generally accepted that peppers that are ripe are sweeter, more flavorful, less bitter and higher in nutrients than peppers that aren't. They also tend to be easier on our stomachs, even the hot varieties. Why then would we ever want to pick an unripe pepper? Well, that leads us to our first tip. And that's simply to grow varieties that are specifically picked green. Poblanos, serranos, anaheim and of course these jalapenos here. Most of these guys can grow for longer and change color in the end, but they're specifically picked green. Shelf life, commercial convenience or a specific culinary use. If you're constantly waiting for your peppers to ripen and it's a bit of a drag, switch it up and grow the types that'll squash the weight and you can harvest them early. Okay, back to that ripening as originally intended. For pepper plants, ripening is often all about the stress. And one of the best ways to stress pepper plants in the later stages of the life cycle is to make them thirsty. Stressed out pepper plants tend to speed up the ripening process because they want that fruit to mature and the seeds to set successfully before the plant dies. Simply put, if they think the end is imminent, it's in their best interest to ripen the fruit faster. Cut back on the watering, even to the point of wilting, and watch your peppers ripen much quicker. Another way to stress pepper plants is to attack them where it hurts the most, the roots. Counting about 8 to 10 inches away from the base of the plant, stick a sharp spade, trowel, or best a hoary hoary knife like this into the soil to try to sever a portion of the root network. Like with drought, the plant is going to see this as a major stressor and it's going to want to send energy and resources to help ripen that fruit faster. It does seem drastic, yes, but an adult healthy pepper plant is going to handle this no problem. Moving away from those stressors, we can take a more nuanced approach with ripening our peppers, and we do this with the redirection of resources. It's sort of a gentle nudge to the plant with us saying, hey, how about you direct most of your energy over here instead of over there? The best way to do this is to pinch off the flowers. New flowers turn into new fruit, and creating new fruit is the most energy-intensive thing that a pepper plant can do. If the season is winding down and the clock is ticking, new fruit that forms now is not going to give us anything useful before winter hits. Knowing this, we might as well rip off all new flowers that appear, helping to direct all of that energy to the existing fruit. If the plant has a finite amount of energy to distribute, it might as well distribute it to the fruit that matters. Peppers are perennials, and they'll keep producing until the weather actually kills the plant. They don't naturally have internal clues to stop flowering and stop fruiting like our strawberries and blueberries do. They don't know winter is coming because they don't know what a winter is. In their perennial world, if it's warm enough, they'll just keep sending out flowers and fruit like it's the middle of summer. Stop the flow of energy to this dead end, and we'll get better versions of the fruit that we already have. And this brings us to our final tip for ripening our peppers, which is to simply harvest them. Just like removing the flowers, diligent harvesting of fruit that is even remotely ripe is going to redirect all of that energy into the pods that are coming of age. Truly, it's all about the next man up. Partially or even fully ripe fruit that you think are done are a huge energy sink for these plants. By taking them completely out of the equation, those resources now become available to the next round of green pods that are on the way. Remember, peppers are perennials, and they'll keep on producing. By harvesting the fruit right when it's done or close to it, we can turn the plants into efficient machines where they produce dozens of peppers instead of just a handful. Pick more to get more. It really is that simple. What wasn't simple, though, was the amount of information we just covered. Let's go ahead and recap all the important stuff to make sure that it all sticks. Peppers aren't necessarily a difficult crop, even for beginners, but they can be stubborn, and fruit that's stalled out on the plant can give any grower the fits. The solution is to go green right from the start or deploy a variety of tips and strategies to speed up the process. Peppers can be perennial powerhouses almost with no equal. Hopefully, the five tips that we covered here today help you to not only get more peppers, but get them faster as well. As always, happy growing, guys, and I'll see you in the next one.