how does cold weather affect pods?

megamoo

megamoo

Down here in southern hemisphere we're heading into winter and all my plants are shutting down but they still have some pods on them. 
 
We've got a forecast of 2C (35F) tomorrow night, I've not had live plants in this weather before.  I'm planning to pull them all this weekend and harvest whatever is left then, but don't know what the cold weather will do to the pods in the meantime.  Lots of leaves have dropped so far. 
 
So what does everyone who lives in colder places think?   Should I harvest everything right away or won't it matter?
 
Cold weather can lead to immature/smaller pods and also take longer to ripen or could possibly fall off. If winter temps are approaching
If you cant grow indoors, Id harvest everything and put any unripe pods in a paper bag to help ripen them up.
 
Paper bag method will work for some of the pods. At the end of last season, I pulled about 10 pounds of unripe pods to ripen in bags, about half eventually ripened, the other half rotted before they ripened. It seems to depend on how mature the pods were when picked. If the pods freeze they will rot pretty quickly.
 
It depends upon the type of plant and how mature the pods are when it turns cold. Some varieties are more tolerant of colder temps than others. With the more cold tolerant plants, if the pods were mature enough before the cooler temps hit then you will still get hot ripe pods, eventually. If the pods are not ripe enough when it gets cold then you'll get very slow growth to maturity and little heat. If they freeze then they will turn mushy.
 
Thanks for the answers.  :)
 
I've been ripening pods on the bench under some bananas for a while.  I guess I really wanted to know will the pods go bad if they experience a frost.  This is a rare thing where I live, probably get one or two frosts a year.  They say there is a slight frost risk so I will harvest everything before then and ripen what I can. 
 
A light frost won't hurt the pods, but will kill the leaves and expose the pods to sun scald. If picked within a few days of the frost they should be fine.
 
I find that my late season pods have far less heat than the early season pods do. I had some scotch bonnets that were awesome mid season, but the late season pods from the same plants were nearly heatless. I'd pick them early and brown bag ripen them if for no other reason than to preserve their heat
 
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