• If you need help identifying a pepper, disease, or plant issue, please post in Identification.

Ripening on the plant

Snarg

Snarg

Hello,
 
I have a number of plants in pots in the greenhouse that are loaded with green pods. The trouble is, I am in zone 5b and the weather is starting to turn. Being in the greenhouse has allowed me to extend my season quite a bit but, due to budgetary contraints, I'm not going to heat it.
 
I have read quite a bit on ripening the pods, both on and off the plant, and am curious as to how sucessfull you have been with either method.
 
I am looking at pulling the plants from the pots, washing off the roots and hanging the plants upside down. Should the plants be hung up in a heated area or would an area protected from the weather, such as an unheated barn or garage, suffice?
 
Thank you for your time. Any and all assistince would be appreaciated.
 
Um.... where did you get the idea of hanging the plants upside down for the winter? Seems like a good way to kill them off to me. Typical overwintering is either just bringing them inside in pots and keeping them as houseplants, or prune stems and roots (and repot!) to let the plant go dormant. Continue to provide water/fert, but at a lesser rate than during the grow season. 
 
I bring my plants indoors to finish ripening off pods, and then repot and prune to let them go dormant once I'm satisfied with what I've got. Any unripe pods can be left on the plant, and they will finish ripening after the plant wakes back up in the spring. 
 
Temperatures - pepper plants don't like their roots to get below 50F on a consistent basis. When in pots, they're more susceptible to cold since they are above ground. Consider this and your local conditions when deciding where to place them and when, and whether to heat them or not.
 
i dont think he is trying to over winter them, he is just trying to ripen the pods..... and then turffing the plants....
 
i have heard about pulling them, and hanging them up side down, so that the pods ripen as well... dont have any first hand experience but i am also going to try this... in the next few weeks.... as my first frost warnning is coming in 2 weeks.... as it looks...
 
You can do it both ways.You can also put the green pods in a brown bag with an apple or banana.

I would leave the plants in the pots as long as you can.They will continue to ripen even when temps are in upper 30s at night. The greenhouse will keep the frost off of them. As long as you keep frost off of them,the pods won't get mushy. Eventually the cold will kill the plants if the greenhouse isn't heated. You shoukd still have some time before it gets that cold.
 
Pr0digal_son said:
You can do it both ways.You can also put the green pods in a brown bag with an apple or banana.

I would leave the plants in the pots as long as you can.They will continue to ripen even when temps are in upper 30s at night. The greenhouse will keep the frost off of them. As long as you keep frost off of them,the pods won't get mushy. Eventually the cold will kill the plants if the greenhouse isn't heated. You shoukd still have some time before it gets that cold.
Click to expand...
Thank you.
 
I plan on keeping them in the GH as long as I can but there will come a time when they need to come out. When that time comes I might try both methods: In a brown bag and hanging a plant.
 
geeme: I'm not looking to overwinter these plants, I'm just looking to ripen the pods.
 
Yeah... it does work... but in my experience the green pods will not ripen completely before they turn mushy.... here is the final harvest from a ButchT I hung last year... the pods were already starting to become soft:
[sharedmedia=gallery:images:1388]
 
Start hacking some branches off of it and it should kick the ripening process into gear.  Works for other plants.  Supposed to make it think it's dying
 
Hanging them will work to a limited extent like Noah Yates mentions.  I have also done this in the past and if the pods have any little bit of color to start with, they should ripen.  Not always, but it beats losing them all.
 
I broke off a big White Bhut this year when the winds came up, so I hung it and have gotten about 30-40 pods off it over the past 3 weeks.  Many will not ripen, but it is better than nothing.  Plus I get to see what the unripend pods taste like without thinking I am wasting one.
 
I know I will be doing this a lot this year and I have lots of unripe pods on the plants and the weather has gone down hill bad.  Nothing is ripening very fast.
 
Also.... im not sure if this is really true or not.... but I have read that a healthy dose of epsom salt will induce ripening of fruits.. so maybe give em a little bit of that a few days before chopping.  of course there are hormonal chemicals that you may or not be able to purchase that will* incude ripening (ethylene)... but the oldest trick n the book is to set unripe fruits in a sunny window... sunlight and heat help stimulate unripe fruit to produce its own ethylene.  So the dashboard of your parked car is also a good spot. (provided ambient temperatures are not too cold.
 
Thank you for all the advice I have gotten so far.
 
I think I am going to try and clip some and see how they do in a window sill. I'll take a majority of the plants out of the pots, wash the roots and hang them upside down in the barn or the garage. I'll try chopping back a few plants, leaving only the branches with pods on them to see if that hastens the ripening process.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top