In zone 8 you have plenty of time left for theose peppers to ripen. I've always thinned the peppers a little by picking a few of the full sized green fruits. The remaining peppers will ripen sooner. Keep in mind that you'll have less ripe peppers but usually more usable peppers, less spoiled ones. Not sure which varieties you are growing but there are a number of varieties (Early Snsation, Zsa Zsa) that begin yellow and are fairly sweet as unripe peppers go. You might want to try just a few of those next year to complement your large yellow bells. I'm not going to pick on Bill, but the yellow bell pictured would not be marketable for me. I mention this because it is common to have overripesides, sunscald , bug damage and especially rotting on peppers as they are left on the plant longer. I pick 90% of my bell peppers with some amount of green on the fruit and my customers accept that. There are even a few (one emailed me for a few bu. of 50%yellow just a few min. ago) that prefer some green to assure themselves that they will have firmer peppers for processing.

I was kind of wondering this too because I have yellow paprika peppers and when I planted them I thought they were red (I'm pretty sure that I ordered the red) but after further inspection of the pack it said that these were yellow paprika and that they were fully ripe when they turned yellow. Now these are a bit tougher than bell peppers because the green is such a light color so it's very hard to tell the difference between the ripe and unripe peppers. Oh well next year I'll make sure to get the right seeds. Strouper

Bruce: I get those now and then. I just always assumed they were caterpillars(tomato/tobacco hornworm or cabbage loopers) since they're always flying around my plants, but now that some have mentioned earwigs, I'm not so sure. I wouldn't seal it. If it burrowed, it's already inside. You can try to let it ripen, but rot may take over before that occurs. Whether ripe or not(and not rotted), I just cut out the bad part before eating. From my experience(and I know this was just an experiment with bells for YOU), you'll want to have a few colored bell plants in the future if you like them--- they're poor producers and a few you'll lose each season due to sunscald and things like this. Try to space the planting (and even the STARTING of seeds) times though--- they'll all seem to ripen at the same time if you don't. I might try to overwinter one or two next year, because they seem to really take off with flowering AFTER the initial harvest, but they take so long to ripen, I end up having to pick a lot while some are still partially green. Too bad I'm not a few more miles closer to the coast---LOL. Kevin

I have Orange Bell Pepper seeds just harvested from my plant. Would love to trade for Yellow Bell Pepper or even Purple Bell Pepper. Peggy