Plant · P-221

Bell Pepper

Capsicum annuum

Bell Pepper is the mild, capsaicin-free member of its pepper group, and also the least heat-tolerant: hot summer temperatures stop it fruiting before hot peppers, and it is the last to start again once things cool, so growers plant a spring crop for a June-July harvest and a separate fall crop for October-November rather than expecting fruit straight through midsummer. Beyond the raw or cooked fruit, the young leaves can be steamed as a potherb and the flowers eaten, and the plant needs steady watering, about 25 to 30 inches over a season, to perform well. Because it carries no capsaicin, it also skips every trait tied to that chemical - no insect-repelling aroma, no deer resistance, and none of the medicinal antirheumatic use recorded for hot peppers of the same species. A wild native relative, the chiltepin, tolerates the heat, drought and clay that defeat this garden form.