Sweet Peppers: A Burst of Color and Flavor

I’ve been canning spaghetti sauce for the past couple of weeks and have San Marzano paste tomatoes, herbs, and garlic coming out of the garden in abundance. But I’m missing one key sauce ingredient: sweet peppers. Some years are great, some not so much. This year, I have plenty of hot peppers but zero sweet peppers. I think I must have forgotten to seed any in my little greenhouse – stupid and near-tragic home-garden-wise, since peppers are one of those great things you can A) do so many things with fresh, and B) freeze in a trice — no blanching, no hot water and no heat in the kitchen, a real plus right now.  Worse: I don’t have those beautiful plants in the garden.

Fifteen years ago, sweet peppers tasted great, but they were all just GREEN. Kelly green plants, Kelly green fruits. Boring. Today, the pepper section in seed catalogues looks like Mardi Gras in full swing. Sweet peppers come in an array of colors from palest yellow to orange, red, purple and chocolate.  There are ‘Blushing Beauties,’ which mimic an autumn sunset as they go from creamy yellow to rosy yellow-orange to red, and long, thick-fingered banana peppers, which are great on the grill or stuffed with jalapenos, rice, herbs, sausage and cheese.

“Peppers are almost ornamental looking now,” says Bob Hill, horticulturist at Park Seed.  “People like to add that color – it adds something to the meal.”

“There has been a lot of hybridizing work in the last few years,” notes Mark Willis, horticulturist at Harris Seeds.  “Interestingly, many of the colored peppers you see in the produce section in winter are grown in greenhouses in Holland.”

Despite this more recent Old World connection, pepper (capsicum annuum) is actually a New World native.  Columbus stumbled on peppers in South America where approximately twenty species of sweet and hot peppers still grow wild. (They can be semi-perennial shrubs in the absence of frost.). Spanish mariners soon realized that sweet peppers, which have more vitamin C than oranges, were a great scurvy preventative.

Although we haven’t always had this rainbow available, brightly colored sweet peppers are not all that new. ‘Sweet Chocolate’ was an old Indian variety reintroduced in mid-19^th century. ‘Morgold,’ ‘Ruby King,’ ‘Pimiento,’ ‘Ruby Giant’ and “Sweet Banana’ are all heirlooms.  And ‘Sweet Bull Nose’ a red variety named for its shape, has been around since 1759.  Yet despite striking color differences, the flavor distinctions are subtle, though most people would be able to tell the difference between a green pepper and the sweeter red pepper in a blind tasting.

Because the flavor is so similar, it’s fun to choose varieties for their ornamental value and convenient shapes.  Do you want to grill them? Banana shapes works well. Stuff?  Get a bell. ‘Tequila’ changes colors during the growing season.  It starts out green and ends as a mixture – oranges, yellows and red – all on the same plant. ‘Jackpot’ is a good-sized brilliant yellow pepper.  The ‘Colossal Hybrid’ is a very blocky, thick-walled pepper that’s excellent for stuffing.

“Orangesicle’s been right popular,” says Hill. “’Karma’ develops into intense red at maturity, and ‘Jolly Yellow’ is a fairly new yellow gold bell type pepper.”

CULTIVATION

Peppers are warm weather lovers that need a long season to mature (as long as 100 days from transplants in some cases), so Maryland gardeners must either start seed indoors 8 weeks before the last frost date, or buy plants.

“The seeds germinate best at 80-85 degrees, and the plants like a constant soil temperature around 75F, which is pretty warm,” notes Susan Jellinek, horticulturist at Thompson and Morgan.  “Sometimes people try to put peppers out too early, but you don’t do yourself any favors.  Cool soil sets them back.”

But Hill warns that pepper plants are also unhappy if it gets too hot. This year’s heat wave has been tough on a lot of things.

“Their flower pollen is sometimes killed in very hot weather — in the 90’s or above,” Hill says.  “You may not get any peppers formed during a week or two of really intense heat, but when the weather moderates they’ll go back to setting fruit.”

Peppers need full sun and regular watering.

“They don’t like their root systems to dry out,” says Willis, so you need to mulch.

Like most annuals, peppers are heavy feeders and need to be fertilized at least a couple of times during the growing season.

“It helps to prep the soil with 3-4 inches of organic stuff like compost and manure prior to planting,” advises Jellinek.    “Then side-dress with a good balanced fertilizer partway through.”

Partway through is about 3-4 weeks after you set them out, though you can put slow-release organic fertilizers on (unless otherwise specified) almost any time.  But don’t use too much nitrogen, which encourages lush leaves and stalks at the expense of flowers and fruit, or you’ll end up with big bushes and no peppers. Willis suggests using 5-10-10 fertilizer.  (The first number in that series indicates the proportion of nitrogen to phosphorus and potassium.).

To keep plants producing well, keep picking.

DISEASE PREVENTION

Peppers are in the Solonaceae (nightshade) family, as are tomatoes, eggplants and potatoes, and are susceptible to many of the same insect and disease pests as their cousins. One occasional problem is blossom end rot, caused by a calcium deficiency or feast-or-famine water as fruits are developing.  It often occurs in weather extremes, especially in either very wet or very dry soil.

“Or if you get very warm weather and the plant suddenly grows, you sometimes see blossom end rot develop,” says Jellinek,  “so keep the water even and fertilize plants.”

One potential problem for nightshade family plants is tobacco mosaic virus, which stunts plants and can mottle or warp fruit.  It is often transmitted in the soil or via diseased plants – a reason for crop rotation – but smokers who have not thoroughly washed hands before gardening can infect plants, too. Some hybrid strains have been bred for resistance to this and other specific diseases. The letters after their names indicate their particular tolerance – for example TMV indicates resistance to tobacco mosaic virus.

Pepper plants, like tomatoes, are also one of those things that do beautifully in pots. Just give them plenty of sun, some TLC as indicated above, and you can happily harvest for weeks from now until frost.