Cool weather affecting my mates and peppers

[Arriga]

The weather has been unusually cool. I have a tomato plant full of green tomatoes. How can I get them to turn red? I also have really nice bell peppers. I wanted to leave them on to change color. With the cool weather will them turn?

[Gary350]

Just wait they always turn red after they hang on the plant for a few weeks. The red ones are the mature ones and the seeds from those will grow. Save some seeds for next year. Cool weather will give you larger peppers.

[Lindsaylew82]

You can "stress" your plants a little. Stop watering them as much (if you water them). Stressed plants want to get their seeds distributed and will ripen quicker.

I wouldn't over do it, but a week without rain or manual watering, when it's cool, will generally trigger ripening here. It's worked well for me with tomatoes, but I've not tried it with peppers. I really like red peppers, but they are slow.

I've grown earlier varieties, but when it's cool, they just stay green forever!

[JayPoc]

You know, it sorta makes sense now why colored (ripe) bell peppers are twice or three times much in the grocery store as the green peppers. They take longer to get ripe, and production on the plant goes way down while you're waiting for them to ripen. Always wondered about the discrepancy in cost and never put two and two together...

[catgrass]

I would think your tomatoes would be ok until your night time temps are consistently below 50 degrees. If so, just pick them, put them in a dark area (I put mine in a dark corner and cover with newspaper), and they will ripen.

[Kageri]

On another forum we have a thread to complain about the cool, wet weather that is causing tomato and pepper problems. Most other plants people are doing fine with but everyone in the midwest to east coast are complaining about slow tomato and pepper growth. We just moved in and are letting the previous owners harvest their garden. The tomatos look really sad. There isn't a week with no rain. There is hardly 3 days without rain this year. Everything is wet and it's been going below 60 at night a few days a week since middle of July.