They look beautiful!

They look nice. Only in California.
Maybe in Florida, too. haha

I live in Ohio, and my peppers have done really well this year, even though it was a terrible year for tomatoes. I just picked a huge basket full of beautiful big peppers, because the weather is supposed to change. Tomorrow I'll make several batches of stuffed peppers and freeze them.

STIR FRY ! Beautiful harvest.

I have had a good crop here too. I harvested two separate flushes of red peppers this year and finally pulled the plants to make room for lettuce last week. I have 4 gallons of chopped bells in the freezer from just two plants!

Nice blocky peppers there. What's the variety?

Nice looking peppers!

These are the california wonders. I was thinking of getting johnny's seeds AG-19 row cover to over winter the plants. The row covers protect up to 28F. We rarely get below 30F.

Nice! I love bell peppers.

Nick: I'm not trying to discourage you from overwintering peppers. Many people do with great success. But production will slow greatly once overnight temps hit consistently in the 40's. However, I've picked bells after xmas here, so let them keep going until they tucker out.

Kevin .

Well I'm not really worried about production, that's part of nature but I just want to keep the plant a live so I don't have to start from seed next spring.

Pepper overwintering works best when you can bring the plants indoors, prune them back severely, and keep them in a cool/dry location where you only have to water them every 3-4 weeks.

You might be able to get away with keeping them alive in-ground in a Z9 with protection, but that's a risk in itself when you have winter nights below 50F very regularly.

California Wonder? Wow beautiful. I have a packet of those ready for planting next year. I need to get another packet since we love eating bell peppers around here in stir fry and sandwiches.

I had good success with my bells this year. Was so sad to pull the plants after frost got them last week.

Even though our late night/early mornings are in the 40's and one day I saw a temperature at 39F the peppers have flowers and some of them are setting fruits. I still haven't bought the AG-19 row cover but I will do that tomorrow.

Nick, lucky you! I'm north of you in Sonoma Co and have had temps in the high 30-low40s for a couple of weeks now! (still daytime temps in the 70s though!?!?!)
I make a pepper casserole using all of the things in a stuffed pepper, just chopped up and topped with cheese.
It freezes VERY well! Nancy

@ Nancy- How are your peppers doing, are they still fruiting? Do you bring yours inside? Since mine are in the ground I will be using a row cover that keeps the inside temps 6-8 degrees above the outside temps. Last year we saw the temps in the high 20's which is odd around hear.

I also have a hand full of peppers turning red. Our daytime temps have been in the low 70's but it seems like for the next 7 days we will be getting into the low 60's.

Wow those are beautiful peppers!

hopefully you can successfully overwinter them :)

When red bell peppers are on sale for the same price as green bell peppers here I usually buy a bunch and take them with me to the desert when we go BBQing. After we are done BBQing all the food, I let the peppers roast till they turn black all around, and put them in a big hot pot thingy to steam them. Then when I get home I get all that charred skin off and then freeze them.

This season I am trying to grow poblano peppers. I would love to be able to do a batch of those like the red peppers. But, I just planted seed the other day so we will see if I can get a plant to successfully grow first!

You should be able to over-winter peppers in San Mateo, with protection when frost is expected. AG-19 might not protect against a hard freeze in the 20's, though.

I over-wintered peppers & eggplant when I lived in San Diego. They looked pretty sad during the winter months, but greened up again when the nights got warmer. At that point, I pruned them back hard to encourage new growth. Those plants bore early, but I never got as much in the second year as I did from new plants, so I abandoned the process. I never applied fertilizer to the second-year plants, though (since I didn't fertilize at all) so that might be worth trying.

It would really be worthwhile over-wintering some of the hot peppers in other species, if you grow any of those.

I'm actually surprised that peppers have done so well in San Mateo. I gardened close to Palo Alto for several years (next to Stevens Creek) and the cool wind off the Bay made warm-weather crops a challenge.

@zeedman- I think every city probably has its own micro climates. So event though Palo Alto is close to San Mateo there is slightly different weather. I know that when San Francisco Airport gets strong winds we don't see those same winds in San Mateo, even though we our just a view minutes a part.

Oh, Nancy, what a great idea! I love stuffed peppers but hate all the extra work to do the stuffing. I am going to try that! Go You!

I had a pleasant surprise with my pepper harvest this year. In early July I bought a TAM pepper on a whim. I was told that it was "heatless". Not mine. Not even close. HOT!

However, we have a South Korean medical student living with us this year and he adores hot peppers, as does my son in law. So, I made hot pepper sauce using one of the recipes from Pepper Joe's web site. They are loving it! That one plant yielded enough for 6 pints of sauce. I'll plant earlier next year!

Sometimes, surprises are good...

Here are the Red Peppers I picked today. The plants are still putting on fruits, should I cut the fruits so the plants don't waste there energy?

{{!gwi}}