Hi Anney--I pick the plant that has the most characterstics that I want for the next year--large fruit, yiels, etc. It does not matter which fruit you decide to save seed from, early or late, and I don't grow Jupiter peppers, so I would probably save seed from the later ripened peppers, and go ahead and munch away on the green ones. As they are bells, I would assume they will slow production if you leave some on to ripen now.

Provided that your season is long enough, you could pick the first green peppers, and let the next batch ripen... but keep in mind, the peppers will need warm weather to ripen, and might not get it late in the season. You could let the first batch ripen, and once picked clean, the plants should set a second crop. Or... you could compromise.

Pick all peppers but one from each plant, and let only that one ripen. A single bell pepper produces a lot of seed. If kept watered, in spite of the ripening pepper, the plants should still produce another crop. You can have your cake (or peppers) and eat it too... including the ripe peppers you saved seed from.

I recommend this method because the first fruits are generally the largest (with more seed), and because seed saved early in the plant's life cycle tends to be more viable than seed saved later.

This is the part you might not want to hear. Peppers can cross fairly easily, so if other peppers were grown nearby, the seed might not be pure. The results could be very unpredictable, especially if you (or a close neighbor) grow several kinds of peppers.

It's very easy to isolate pepper plants for seed saving. Since the flowers self-pollinate, covering the plants with an insect-proof barrier will result in pure seed (for any flower set under cover).

Thanks, guys, for helping me think this through. Since the plants have many peppers of various sizes, I think I'll leave just one of the first ones to ripen for seeds and continue to pick the others as they get larger. Maybe the plant won't shut down production since all the rest will be eventually harvested. There are still many blossoms on the plants, too.

This year because of this post about fertilizing peppers, I fertilized the plants much more heavily than in years past. I don't know whether the high production is due to the weather or the fertilization, but that much fertilizer certainly hasn't made the plants produce only leaves!

Zeedman, fortunately I won't have to worry about cross-pollination since these are the only peppers I'm growing. Somebody at my son's work keeps us well supplied with his overflow of hot peppers, a very nice thing to do. We send cukes and tomatoes to him.