Sweet Bell Peppers One Of The Top Garden Plants

Sweet Peppers are listed as one of the top five vegetable plants grown in gardens. The most common sweet pepper is the familiar green bell pepper.

The sweet peppers are a cultivar group of the Capsicum annum (chili pepper) which like the tomato are native to Mexico, Central America, and South America. The pepper seeds were collected and new varieties were developed in Europe, Asia, and Africa.

The familiar hot pepper varieties produce capsaicin. Capsaicin is the chemical that causes a strong burning sensation sought out by many cooks and hot spicy food daredevils.

The sweet peppers do not produce capsaicin.

Green peppers are actually unripened sweet bell peppers and have a more bitter taste than the fully red-ripened sweet bell pepper. Oddly enough, the sweet red bell peppers have almost 3xs the Vitamin C content of an orange.

The cultural requirement for growing sweet peppers is similar to tomato plants. Sweet peppers need full sun, grows best in a loam or silty-loam soil with good water-holding capacity. But they can grow on many soil types, as long as the soil is well drained.

When harvesting sweet peppers (either fully ripened or the unripened green) it is best to cut them from the stems. Green peppers are one of the few vegetables that can be frozen without blanching. Wash them thoroughly, slice or chop them and put them in a single layer on a baking sheet to freeze them.