Its interesting... I left alot of my unripe peppers on the plants after the first, second, and third frosts had effectively killed all of the green tissue... Basically if you went up to the garden you would see sticks with multi-coloured orbs decorating them. I waited about a week after the thrid frost (as the weather hard warmed to 40-60) and by that time all of the remainging peppers had ripened.... and let me tell you... it was an all-day job picking that load of peppers. Out of hundreds of peppers, only a handful were affected by the frost... the rest were as wonderful (or horrible) as ever. So in the future i am not going to worry about picking unripe pods before the frost.