The Urban Permaculture Farm Magazine

A 5000 year old vegetable, this South American sweet counterpart to the hot pepper has been gracing tables all over the world thanks to Spanish and Portuguese explorers. And with no small help from the fact that bell peppers are extremely adaptable to most growing climates and conditions, this culinary wonder spread through the world via trade routes like wildfire being quickly incorporated into many different cuisines. They now are a staple in Europe where they are dried for paprika, an absolute must in Creole and Cajun dishes, they are used heavily in Mexico, Portugal, and Asia in all sorts of dishes.

Bell peppers have a great many uses. Cooked into dish after dish, they can also be munched down on raw. I like to add green bell pepper and red onion to my chicken salad. It makes for such a delightful crunch and adds a nice texture and flavor combination with the onion and celery. I also like to have green or red strips of bell pepper on my tuna sandwich. I also prefer to use orange bell pepper when grilling beef and vegetable kabobs. The idea there being to cook the meat, but only to char ever so slightly the vegetables. There is just something about cherry tomatoes and orange bell peppers right off the grill, it is incredible. A quick coring and a nice short dip on hot water and you can stuff your pepper with whatever you'd like.

The bell pepper can be dried for later use, too. They dry very well and if you like to make soups from a dry vegetable mix, I would very much recommend that you use both green and red varieties. Dehydrating peppers for later use is quite easy. You can use a food dehydrator or you can sun dry them (but that is another post).

While this capsaicin lacking pepper isn't hot, it is the only edible part of the plant. This pepper belongs to the Nightshade family, like potatoes, so no getting cute and trying to garnish with the leaves of this poisonous plant!

Start seeds indoors eight to ten weeks before your last frost date. Germinating seeds can be challenging but with practice, it will become easy work. Transplant to your garden after hardening off after all danger of frost has past. If the weather is cool after your last frost date, make sure to hold off on transplanting or use a coldframe. Sweet peppers prefer full sun, hot weather and require generous amounts of organic material such as compost, manure and general fertilizers, organic of course! Keep the soil moist, but not wet and water regularly during the hottest months and mulch to retain moisture. Plants mature in 70 to 90 days for most, some take longer, but it is worth the wait. Peppers of all types self pollinate, but to avoid cross pollination with other species, avoid planting sweet and hot peppers together.

Harvest peppers as soon as they reach an edible size. Green peppers are the immature fruits of the rainbow of colored bell peppers. Left on the plant, these will eventually mature to their proper color. Though, it should be noted that the sweet green pepper is the most popular pepper to be grown. Peppers will continue to grow until the frost kills them. But this shouldn't stop you from having peppers all year round as peppers will grow nicely in containers that can be brought in out of the cold.

With a rainbow of colors available there is a plethora of things that can be done. Consider this, purple bell peppers with purple potatoes for a nice crunchy potato salad that ends up being a creamy lavender color after completion. Liven up your dried soup mixes with a mixture of colored carrots, potatoes and sweet peppers.