Early Peppers Stay Green?

[Derelict]

Small issue but you guys and gal are so good with your comments that I post this anyway.  I'm still a noob (3rd season) with 42 plants in 13 half barrels, all types of peppers.  I live in So Cal (coastal San Diego) where we have had an unusually wet, cool, and sunless spring and summer.  It's already June 21 and we haven't had a full day of sun in months!
 
Anyway,  one of my most thriving plants this season is the Bulgarian Carrot.  Even when the plants were still only 12-15" tall they were putting out full sized peppers, 3" long.  Trouble is, none of them were turning orange.  They were all green and tasted like green fruit, e.g., like a tart green pepper instead of citrusy like an orange pepper.
 
Today I have about 20 fruits on the 3 plants, most of them full sized and fully green.  Yet, one pepper is now an inch long and is the expected orange color. Bravo!
 
So my questions are:
 
1) Should I have been pinching off the early fruits to encourage more plant growth, and an early arrival of the orange fruits?
2) Once a pepper hits full size, will the green fruits ever turn orange?  I've left some on the vine for longer than normal, and none of them change color at all.
3) Is the reason for all green fruits, this late, due to the sunless spring and summer? 
4) In general, should I be picking off the early fruit so as to encourage plant growth and full maturity of the later fruit?
 
Thanks for any help.  See photos below. 

 

[solid7]

Funny weather can make funny peppers.  Give it another month or so.  Most of my peppers don't look or taste right with the first fruits.  Half the time, they get really big, and look amazing, but taste like crap.  When the second round comes in, they are always much more representative.
.
FWIW, my weather in the early part of my season when fruit first set, is much like you have described.  Often I still get really cool evenings, which can sometimes put the plant right on the edge of dormancy.  I'm sure that something gets disrupted.

 

[solid7]

I had the problem this year with Aji Amarillo, which got almost twice as big as normal, but tasted like really sweet green grass and tobacco. (or something equally horrible)  A month later, they were back to awesome.

 

[Derelict]

I had the problem this year with Aji Amarillo, which got almost twice as big as normal, but tasted like really sweet green grass and tobacco. (or something equally horrible)  A month later, they were back to awesome.

 

So ... could I have made the change happen sooner, if I picked off the green ones before they got big?

 

[solid7]

I doubt it.  Unless you have god-like powers to control the plant's metabolism, and things like the movement of xylem, and hormone production, etc, etc, etc.  I was basically telling you that you need to suck it up, and wait for the plant to begin its production in earnest.  Those are what I usually call "puberty" peppers.

 

[Bicycle808]

I think there's a lot of mythology and urban legends about methods for "tricking" your plants into behaving certain ways. Some are measurable and week-known to legit, like topping to encourage more branching. (Whether or not topping ultimately leads to more pods by season's end has been the subject of debate, though.) Others, like various ways to speed up ripening thru stress or plucking early pods seen less valid, to me. I have found that my earliest pods tend to take longer to ripen than the later ones. Whether this is down to weather conditions or the plant's relative maturity, I do not know...

But I do know that the large, green, early pods that haven't ripened yet will ripen eventually, and probably before the next wave would have, anyway.

My best results in my first couple of rookie years have come from leaving the pods on the plant to ripen when they're ready. But if you have a lot of pods in play, you could theoretically conduct some experiments and see what strategy works best? Like, you already picked a few; see if the next one's mature and ripen before the remaining early pods ripen...

Personally, I prefer ripe pods, and only eat green pods if they're Jalapeños, Serranos, Poblanos, Bells, or New Mex/Anaheim types. And, even with most of those, I far prefer the ripe examples. Red Jalapeños rock my world, whereas green ones are tasty yet forgettable.

 

[Derelict]

I think there's a lot of mythology and urban legends about methods for "tricking" your plants into behaving certain ways. Some are measurable and week-known to legit, like topping to encourage more branching. (Whether or not topping ultimately leads to more pods by season's end has been the subject of debate, though.) Others, like various ways to speed up ripening thru stress or plucking early pods seen less valid, to me. I have found that my earliest pods tend to take longer to ripen than the later ones. Whether this is down to weather conditions or the plant's relative maturity, I do not know...

But I do know that the large, green, early pods that haven't ripened yet will ripen eventually, and probably before the next wave would have, anyway.

My best results in my first couple of rookie years have come from leaving the pods on the plant to ripen when they're ready. But if you have a lot of pods in play, you could theoretically conduct some experiments and see what strategy works best? Like, you already picked a few; see if the next one's mature and ripen before the remaining early pods ripen...

Personally, I prefer ripe pods, and only eat green pods if they're Jalapeños, Serranos, Poblanos, Bells, or New Mex/Anaheim types. And, even with most of those, I far prefer the ripe examples. Red Jalapeños rock my world, whereas green ones are tasty yet forgettable.

 
This is good info, thanks.  For the Bulgarian Carrot at least, leaving the full sized green pods on the plant had no effect.  They stayed green. 
 
And curiously, now that I'm in the second month of fruiting, the new fruit is coming in with color from the start.  I thought for all ordinary peppers they start out green and then turn.
 

 

[solid7]

And curiously, now that I'm in the second month of fruiting, the new fruit is coming in with color from the start.  I thought for all ordinary peppers they start out green and then turn.
 

 
It's been my experience that if they take an extra long time to ripen into the right color, they never taste right.  Or good.  Maybe others will say different.  

 

[Bicycle808]

 
This is good info, thanks.  For the Bulgarian Carrot at least, leaving the full sized green pods on the plant had no effect.  They stayed green. 
 
And curiously, now that I'm in the second month of fruiting, the new fruit is coming in with color from the start.  I thought for all ordinary peppers they start out green and then turn.
 

That's something I've never observed before. You mean the second wave of pods are orange from the very beginning?

 

[Derelict]

That's something I've never observed before. You mean the second wave of pods are orange from the very beginning?

 

Yes.  The first pepper of the second wave Bulgarian Carrot is coming in bright orange, as in the photo above.  Also, my first two habaneros are coming in bright orange.
 
Not so for the others.  I have two large Ethiopian browns, first wave, still green.  My first wave of Fresnos are still green.  Aji Colorados are now 2" long and they are still green.  Just about everything else is a megahot and the fruits are still just pinpricks.

 

[solid7]

I'm holding firm that in a month, you're going to look back at this and laugh.

 

[Bicycle808]

Every pepper I have ever grown has started out very tiny, in the unripe color (usually green)... Then it grows to its maximum size, all the while staying green (or other unripe color), then it slowly changes to its ripe color, sometimes with intermediate colors occurring, too.

 

[Doelman]

The only time I harvest peppers early is if I want to use them for something, or they're impeding the growth of the plant while it's small (aka something like a bell pepper plant with 3 full size peppers on it while it's only a foot tall).  All peppers that don't fall off will eventually ripen given enough time, even the ones that don't taste all that great still do pretty good on a skewer, on the grill, with a little marinade on them
 
I've never timed it but those early peppers always seem to take the longest to ripen.  I've always wondered if it was because I lack patience and it just seems that much longer to get the first ones or if it actually does take longer.

 

[Derelict]

The only time I harvest peppers early is if I want to use them for something, or they're impeding the growth of the plant while it's small (aka something like a bell pepper plant with 3 full size peppers on it while it's only a foot tall).  All peppers that don't fall off will eventually ripen given enough time, even the ones that don't taste all that great still do pretty good on a skewer, on the grill, with a little marinade on them
 
I've never timed it but those early peppers always seem to take the longest to ripen.  I've always wondered if it was because I lack patience and it just seems that much longer to get the first ones or if it actually does take longer.

 
I totally agree with you but this Bulgarian Carrot plant defies all the common sense. 
 
Each plant was only about 20 inches tall, and still slender, yet they were all packed with fruit!  I mean, the 10-15 green peppers at a time!  All full size, 3 inches.  It made no sense.   So I picked them off just to allow the plant to grow more. 
 
Ah well, this is not a serious issue.  I was just curious.  Now hornworms, THAT is a serious issue.