Agree. Most sweet bells won't grow as large in the home garden as those you find in the store from commercial growers. Especially so when grown in containers. Be sure to keep them pocked so the plant stays in production.

Dave

Dave: I assume you mean picked? Would you pick a few of the early green ones before they ripen or just be sure to get them after they turn color? I grow several varieties of sweets and hots in containers, so my production isn't great, although it's enough for my needs.

Picked instead of "pocked"? Oh yeah. :)

<Would you pick a few of the early green ones before they ripen or just be sure to get them after they turn color?>

Yeah I would pick a few of the green ones to keep the plant in production. Depending on variety, with bells I usually pick 2 out of 3 green or approx. 65% of the over-all production green and leave the rest to color up. With hots I leave more and only pick about 40% green. In this particular case CA Wonder stays green so nothing gained color-wise by leaving it on the vine.

But with the colored bell peppers you sacrifice over-all production by waiting for them ALL to color up on the plant. The plant shuts down. Unlike the colored bells you buy in the store that were picked green and then ripened with ethylene gas so the plants would keep on producing, home grown colors require a balancing act between picking some green and leaving some to change color.

Dave

California Wonder is a green to red pepper. Not as fast to ripen as modern varieties grown for ripe peppers but it gets there.

Now that is good to know! Thanks for the correction farmerdill. Never seen anything but full green without even a hint of color from it in all the years of growing it.

Dave

Glad to hear it. Thank you all for the advice

Agreed with farmerdill, they eventually turn red, I have a California Wonder I overwintered from last summer, trimmed back this spring and it set peppers and they turned red just took forever. Sort of a forget about them for a while wait.

don't you think it would look funny for such small plant to hold 5-6 inch peppers?

the fruit only gets as big as the plant. want big peppers? need to grow bigger plants. want bigger plants? need more space/bigger containers. to hold big peppers the plants would need to be like 30+ inches tall

There is also a California Wonder variety that ripen to orange too. I am growing Carmen this year for the first time that is a large bulls horn shape and very sweet pepper when ripe. They are prolific but only started ripening to red in the last week or so which was a couple weeks later than the listed DTM I think due to the cool and wet spring.

I have peppers in pots and peppers in the garden. I have a mix of sweet varieties, but I have some of each variety in each location. The garden pepper plants are bigger as are the peppers on the plants. I'm not much of a container gardener, and it's more of a location test on the side of the house but my point is smaller plants do appear to produce smaller peppers.