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Hurrying Ripening

Blister

Blister

Is there a way to speed up the process at all? I'm coming to the end of the growing season (MAYBE 35 days left) and have yet to see a ripe hab. Both of my plants were delayed a few weeks earlier this year because of aphids and crappy soil, but now they're loaded with pods. The down side is that none of them have even come close to going ripe. I'd like to at least get something out of them this year, but I'm not sure if you can do anything to help them along.

One is in a pot while the other is in the ground. I can take the one in the pot indoors to extend the season a bit, but I can't do much with the other one that in the ground. Is this just wishful thinking on my part?
 
i'm in the exact same position. slow summer, and they were a bit behind to begin with. There's a "ripening" product out there that I've heard of on this site, but never seen or used. Not sure if actually could do the trick. I'm planning on digging up a few plants and potting them, bringing them indoors and getting some decent lights on them. Outside of that, I'm with you, what do you do?
 
I've never tried it with pepper plants, but with tomatoes you can "root prune" with a large knife of shovel etc. to speed up ripening
 
I've done a little poking around on the internet and have found there there are chemicals that can be used, but I'm not sure if I can get them or what other options are out there.

I've done some root pruning to larger houseplants, but never heard of it being used for speeding up the ripening process. My dad just finished pruning a lot of the little suckers and smaller branches off of his termaters and seems to be having some success with that. I guess the theory behind it is that you get rid of the foliage that's not really helping so the plant puts all of its energy into the fruit. He's actually got a few tom's to start ripening the day after he did it.

I was considering cutting off a few branches on my hab plants to prevent them from putting out more buds, but I haven't gotten that confident about it just yet. Theory is one thing, but practice may be different for pepper plants. I dunno.
 
Picking them will cause them to ripen, though you will lose out on heat and flavor. It may not ripen to the deepest hue either.
 
I would say leave them on the plant as long as possible. Also I as you get closer to the end of your season you can try removing all the tiny pods that you know will not have enough time to grow. Hopefully, with them gone, the plant can put its energy into ripening the fully grown pods.

I guess that doesn't really help with speeding up the process but I figured it was better than nothing. Good luck.
 
For what its worth, If I lived up where you do I would start my plants earlier. Even here in MO I started several of my plants in late November nwhich is a little extreme however even my rocotos are loaded with pods this year
 
You could try using a fertilizer that's high in Phosphorus. It can hurry up maturity in pods.

Last year when I was running out of time I used a fert called "Bloom Plus" by Schultz. It's numbers are 10-60-10. I believe it helped me get a few more pods to ripen before the first frost.
 
You could also try stressing the plants more by letting them wilt between each watering. Digging up, potting and bringing that second plant indoors on cold nights is also an option to extend your season.
 
Right at the end of ur season, pick em and let em sit in a bowl on ur counter for a week to 10 days. They should ripen over that period, even the very small ones. I've not really noticed a drop in heat or flavour by pickin em green n lettin em ripen. But then again, i don't eat em whole so don't really know :)
 
I found a link to RIPEN in a different post here on THP. I'm not sure if I can find it here in my small part of Canada though. I'll have to look into it.
 
Stressing does work, as I forgot to water my 4 hab plants over the weekend, and even the newer pods are turning orange. I hope I didn't hurt the plant itself by accidently doing this, because it bounced back in about an hour from a severly wilted stage that had it looking dead with a lot of green pods on it.
 
If you dig the plant up and pot it, you'll be root pruning at the same time which should stress the plant into quick ripening mode
 
I think I may dig it up and pot it. It's doing pretty good despite the early battles with aphids and cold weather. It actually looks a little bit better than the one I currently have in a pot. Both of them still have a small amount of aphids on them as it's an ongoing battle.
 
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