On Fri, 18 Jul 2003 10:19:25 GMT, troikette
wrote:

Thanks everyone, much appreciated.

BTW the advice to take them off and let them ripen off the plant came
from the BBC gardening website so shows what they know!

I don't get the impression that peppers are nearly as much
used in the UK as in the USA. This may be because they're
such heat-lovers, or maybe because Mexican food isn't as
popular in the UK. Don't know.

BTW (and somewhat off-topic) my husband's a Brit, he came to
the USA six years ago. It's really hard for anyone British
who has not lived here to understand how different our
climate is, or how variable it is from day to day (sometimes
from hour to hour!). We have a lot of extremes that the
British Isles are spared.

I really envy the Brits their equable climate: I think
gardeners there are very fortunate (on the whole) and
probably don't even know it. Also your longer hours of
sunshine in the summer, because you're so far north. This
would help a great deal. (We live in Pennsylvania in the
northeastern USA now - at about the same latitude as Madrid
or Rome, although our climate is nothing whatsoever like
theirs.)

I lived in Edmonton (Canada) for two years, about on the
same latitude as northern England, and everything grew
WONDERFULLY there with the long daylight in summer (except
things which required a lot of heat). The flowers were
brighter, more intense colors than they are further south -
the difference was very noticeable. The vegetables got
larger than they do in most of the USA too.

Pat