Do you have any pictures? You are stating that the peppers are turning or have turned different colors....I have a red bell and I choose to let it turn red. The only different between green and red is about 3 more weeks on the plant. The one that is black does not seem right that is why I asked for a picture to help determine what is going on.Red is sweeter too.

Dusty

The colored bells, white, purple, black, color up early and turn red when ripe. Yellow bells start out some shade of green ( some are light green) but ripen to yellow. The others with the exception of chocolate bell ripen to red. Chocolate bell also ripens to red but retains its immature color enough to result in a brownish red. Bottom line, ripe bells are red or yellow and take three weeks or more from full grown green stage. Ther are a couple of green whn ripe cultivars like Evergreen and Staygreen, but they are rare.
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I'll go out and snap some pics when I get back in town but the black one looks like farmerdilla's first picture above. The yellows are pale yellow.

Farmerdilla- your peppers look awesome!! We pickled some sweet banana peppers, gypsy peppers and jalapenos today with garlic and dill and we popped a few carribean reds in there in 2 of the 3 jars. I will take a picture of the pickled peppers after they are ready:)
Ania- sounds like you have a nice little crop going yourself. Looking forward to the pictures:)

Those are some beautifully corked jalapenos Dusty!

Here's this week's sweet pepper harvest, gypsies and bells. Hot peppers are in the smoker/dehydrator as we speak...

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The yellow and red bell peppers looks so tempting I can imagine a big roll of pizza by merely looking at the picture.

Deciding when to harvest bell pepper will depends on the variety and it may also take 75 to 90 days from the transplanting period.

Such beautiful perfect peppers. :) We recently harvested some of our green bells and yellow bananas. They were made into a dish with our Japanese eggplant, home grown sliced tomatoes, Parmesan cheese, browned Italian sausage.....

The green bell seeds I planted produce green bells that never change color from green but the "Rainbow" bells have greens initially that turn different colors with age: red, black,green, yellow, etc. I have never seen one of the green bells (other than x the "Rainbow" ones) turn any other color than the green ... regardless of age. I'm in USDA zone 7.

I pick & eat the bells (esp. the greens) at any stage but let the "Rainbows" go til they turn their pretty colors!

Those pepper photos are beautiful!

They take a long time to change colors. All the red ones took at least 90 days from the time transplants were put in the ground (mid-March). The golden ones were added to the bed about three weeks later, and I decided to pick them before they had fully changed colors since there were so many peppers on the plants. I finished ripening them in a paper bag.

ok here's a question. i'm growing peppers for the first time this year. i'm getting buds and had a flower that has since dropped off and left what i'm guessing is a pepper. it looks smooth and green when looked at from underneath. am i thinking right here.

Ania, that's not black - it's purple. I have one of those too and they are perfectly fine when they mature.

Hi, this is my first year planting bell peppers. I have had several blossoms which will flower and then die and fall off. No peppers have shown yet. There are black marks on the stems of the plants. Is this normal?

The black marks on the stem - where the leaves connect - are normal.

Medcave: Thank you for the compliment on my jalapenos and now our gypsys are almost as Red as your beautiful harvest.
Great job:)

Dusty

Good deal! I like the gypsies. This is the first year I've grown them and enjoy the flavor and fairly meaty, prolific production.

It sounds like you and Ken may have your wilting problem under control? Thinks got ugly here this week. It's been so hot for so long here that I've been going in to work at first light and taking off early in the afternoon. When I get home I don't want to go back outside at all. As a result I missed watering the in-ground sweet peppers one cycle and suffered severe wilting by the time I noticed.

A few of the bells softened and started rotting, and a few of the baby bells on the west side of the plot got sun-scald. So my harvest wasn't so good this week, though I did go ahead and pick most of the bells before they fully ripened, or rotted first. I noticed the folks at the Farmers Market this morning had bells picked at the same stage as mine, so I must not be the only one struggling.

On a positive note, I have peppers of all sorts still setting fruit, not a lot mind you, but a few. And I went ahead and added sun shade to the west side of the plot too, so maybe they'll keep on keeping on. :)

Dave:

We made some awesome stuffed peppers with the red Gypsys, big Bertha, giant Marconi and sweet banana. Yummy! We look like we are going to lose the one red Carribean, we are just sick over it:( Ken tried all of your suggestions and it looks well, not too good:( Hope all is well with your garden and happy harvesting:)

Dusty