harvesting Advice on maturing harvest

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dddd

So below are the pictures.  Its late July.  In Iowa, we can get cold weather in another month.  I'm getting worried I'm not going to get any peppers this year.  First peppers started popping up mid June.  Is there anything I can do to speed these up? 
 
Feeding;
They have been running really dry lately (leaves wilting when I get home at 4pm), so I have started watering them twice daily, about 1gal per plant, that seems to make them perky. 
I'm doing Fox Farms ferts.  Tiger bloom, big bloom and grow big at half dose twice per week. 
I just started back up with the Epsom salt every other week and Cal-Mag every other week alternating.  I stopped for awhile thinking the ferts would do the job. 
 
They seem happy.  But they are taking their sweet sweet time on this.  I'm giving the Ghost peppers away this year, which are the biggest producers.  So I would like some to tide me over for the winter.  The Reapers will come inside over winter, already have a grow area planned for them to produce this winter with luck.
 
Hard to see in the pics, but all together I think I have well over 100 pods. 
 
Ghosts;
 




 
Reapers;
 

 
I don't think you can rush the ripening process, the pods will ripen when they are ready to ripen. But it sounds like you have at least a month, and maybe more, for them to get there. And even if you do have to harvest them early, I'd expect green superhots that have been on the plant for a couple of months would still be really damn hot. So it looks like you are on track to harvest a nice pile of extremely hot peppers, in any case.  :cool:
 
BTW, those are some impressive looking plants you have there. They look like small trees. :D I'd say what you have been doing is definitely working.
 
Try reducing the fertilizer you are giving to the plant, so the plant thinks it is going to die soon and thus may speed up the maturing process.
 
Thanks for the responses guys.  I'm just a little nervous haha.  Hate to have the wasted potential of all these peppers and not even be ripe.  We'll see I guess.  Fingers crossed another month things change.  I didn't know if it was something like more calcium or anything that I could give them to get them to work harder on producing the peppers.
 
The ghost peppers are actually 3 years old.  I over winter them under grow lights every year.  I will be getting rid of them this year, they are a hassle.  Takes 3 people to take them in and out of the house every year.  The reapers will be the new ones over wintering this year and I will keep better track of them and not let them get so tall. 
 
dddd said:
Thanks for the responses guys.  I'm just a little nervous haha.  Hate to have the wasted potential of all these peppers and not even be ripe.  We'll see I guess.  Fingers crossed another month things change.  I didn't know if it was something like more calcium or anything that I could give them to get them to work harder on producing the peppers.
 
The ghost peppers are actually 3 years old.  I over winter them under grow lights every year.  I will be getting rid of them this year, they are a hassle.  Takes 3 people to take them in and out of the house every year.  The reapers will be the new ones over wintering this year and I will keep better track of them and not let them get so tall. 
Click to expand...
you could just chop them and root prune them and put them in a smaller pot for the winter?
but if I remember right you said that these 2 plants have been poor producers for all 3 years...maybe you just need some different GhostPepper DNA.
 
plant earlier next year.  Last year i had hundreds of pods still on my plants when it got cold so I cut them at the base and hung them to ripen, it worked but there was also a ton of moisture loss thus making the peppers hotter and more bitter.  Wont be doing it again. 
 
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