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Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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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.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun
- USDA zone
- USDA 9–11
- Soil
- Sand · Loam · Clay
- Moisture
- Well-Drained · Moderate
Vertical layer
Herbaceous- Soil pH
- 6–7
- Plant type
- Annual
- Mature height
- 1–4 ft
- Mature spread
- 12–24 in
- Plant spacing
- 12–36 in
- Root type
- Fibrous-shallow
- Spread pattern
- None
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The deeper layer
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- Primary
- Locked ecological function
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- Byproduct
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Behind the record
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