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So you’ve decided you want to grow bell peppers and you’ve read my bell pepper growing guide. Great! But you want to know more about the best pepper varieties before you take the plunge. Smart!
I haven’t covered the hundreds of different bell pepper varieties available, because that would be a huge book’s worth of information. Instead, I’ve stuck to my favorite tried and tested bell peppers, from tiny pepper cherries to big old Ozark giants.
Most are heirlooms, because I like to save my own seed (and occasionally dabble with creating my own cross-breeds) and I dislike anything that’s been unnecessarily modified or tampered with. But I have included some info on the best hybrid pepper seeds for those who need something that’s been chosen for resistance to specific diseases and pests.
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Best Snack Peppers to Grow
I love snacking on peppers fresh from the plant as much as tomatoes! Obviously you won’t catch me chowing down on immature green bell peppers or jalapeño peppers, but super-ripe, bite-size, sweet mini peppers?
Absolutely! I’ve listed my favorite varieties below. Although there are plenty of others to choose from, these are the ones I’ve had the best success with and those that, in my opinion, give the best flavor.
Mini Belle
Days to Germination: 7-10 days
Days to Harvest: 60 days
The Mini Belle is genuinely adorable! This plant produces stacks of teeny tiny sweet bell peppers, with each fruit between one and two inches tall and wide.
The mini belle makes fantastic snacking peppers and is great for salads, too.
Mini belle plants only grow to 15 inches, making them ideal for container gardening or where growing space is at a premium. They also work well in vertical gardens.
And, because the bushes are so compact and the fruits so small, they don’t usually need staking if you grow them in a reasonably sheltered location. This is one of my favorite pepper varieties, because the fruits are delicious, and the plants produce so many peppers with minimal effort from me.
Sweet Red Pepper Cherry
Days to Germination: 10-14 days
Days to Harvest: 75 days (until completely red)
Cherry peppers are possibly my favorite snack peppers. As the name implies, they’re about the same size as actual cherries, and you get a lot of them per plant.
Although the plants only grow to about 36 inches tall and wide, they are heavy producers, making sweet red pepper cherries a fantastic choice for gardens with limited space.
Like most peppers, these can be used while still green for cooking, but if you want them for snacking, wait! Let them mature to a bright, uniform red and enjoy their crisp, juicy sweetness.
Their firm flesh, small size, and sweet taste also make these cherry peppers the perfect choice for pickling.
Pimentos
Days to Germination: 6 – 12 days
Days to Harvest: 80 – 100 days
Pimentos are often classed as cherry peppers because of their diminutive size. These heart-shaped mini peppers are bright red when mature and grow to up to 4 inches long and 3 inches wide.
You can use these mini peppers as snacking peppers, cook with them, eat them raw in salads, or make paprika from them. Paprika from pimentos is mild, smoky, and sweet.
These are not technically sweet peppers – they’re actually chili peppers. But they’re the mildest chili pepper, only measuring up to 100 units on the Scoville scale. They’re 40 times milder than jalapeño peppers.
The pepper plants are compact and bushy, making them for small spaces, and they’re incredibly productive peppers, producing huge amounts of tiny peppers with smooth skin and tasty flesh.
Best Large Bell Pepper Varieties
Generally, large bell peppers require a longer growing season to reach full maturity. However, if you start your seeds early, you can encourage even the largest peppers to grow and mature even with a fairly short local growing season. Plus if you have the space, you can grow these big bells inside, giving you a longer season during which to enjoy the sweet flesh. Large and giant peppers are great for stuffing, sliced up as vehicles for dip or hummus, and for bulking out sauces, stews, and other family favorites.
Ozark Giant
Days to Germination: 7 – 14 days
Days to Harvest: 65 – 70 days
Ozark giant peppers are large, blocky, and elongated; almost rectangular in shape. This fist-sized sweet pepper is thick-walled, with crisp dense, sweet flesh that’s great raw or cooked.
An heirloom pepper from the US, this traditional giant bell pepper grows on large bushes that reach 35 to 40 inches high. The plants are prolific producers, too. And because the peppers themselves are so large, the plants most definitely need staking and supporting, or they’ll simply collapse under their own weight.
Ozark giant peppers reach up to 8 inches. One of the easier giant pepper varieties to grow, these monster peppers have comparatively few pepper seeds inside. And, because these are heirloom peppers, you can save the seeds and grow even more giant peppers next year.
Big Bertha
Days to Germination: 14-21 days
Days to Harvest: 72 days
Big Bertha is one of the largest elongated sweet peppers available, with huge, 7-inch long fruits. The plants reach 36 inches high and 18 inches wide, with a bushy habit.
Great for stuffing, cooking, or using as a vehicle for dip or hummus, Big Berthas grow prolifically and, although the plants are sturdy, the sheer size and weight of the fruits mean that you will need to provide solid support in the form of stakes or tomato cages.
The flesh is thick and extremely sweet, and there are surprisingly few seeds inside. If you’re new to growing peppers, Big Bertha is a great choice, as it’s one of the easier pepper varieties to grow, they grow fairly rapidly and produce up to 12 pounds of peppers per plant.
Great for slicing into stir fry and adding a little bitter spiciness to stews, curries, and more, Big Berthas can be used as green bell peppers once they move from pale to dark green. For the sweetest flavor, wait until the ripe pepper turns a vibrant, bright red.
Gatherer’s Gold
Days to Germination: 10-14 days
Days to Harvest: 95 days
As the name implies, Gatherer’s Gold is a bright yellow gold pepper. These open-pollinated horn-shaped peppers produces big, thick-walled pointed peppers that range in color from bright yellow to deep golden yellow. Thick-walled, crisp, and sweet, this is one of the best pepper varieties for all-round use and has comparatively few seeds inside. It’s a variation of the traditional Italian favorite frying peppers, but is sweet enough for eating raw, too.
These yellow peppers can reach 10 inches in length, with a long, tapered look. The pepper plants reach around 36 inches in height and 12 to 18 inches wide. Although they have a sturdy growth habit, they’ll need staking or supporting with tomato cages, as the stems can get quite brittle and fragile late in the season when they’re loaded with fruit.
Best Heirloom Bell Pepper Plants
Whether I’m growing peppers, onions, beets, or berries, heirloom seeds are always my top choice. While I won’t get too far into the heirloom versus hybrid debate in this post, there are a few obvious benefits to choosing heirlooms. Unlike hybrid seeds, if you choose heirlooms you can save the seeds yourself from the healthiest plants to grow year on year. The seeds are also non-GMO so they haven’t had their DNA altered artificially. You can usually find organic heirloom seeds too, so you know they haven’t been exposed to chemicals. Plus, if you are interested in prepping or keeping a seed vault, heirlooms (all seeds, not just peppers) are the only option as hybrids don’t generally produce viable seeds.
Here are my favorite heirloom bell pepper varieties.
Sweet Chocolate
Days to Germination: 10-21 days
Days to Harvest: 75 days
Sweet chocolate bell peppers are awesome. It has chocolate-colored skin and red-brown flesh that’s sweet, crisp, and delicious. This cultivar was bred by Elwyn Meader in 1965.
With time to maturity at 60 to 85 days, this is one of the best shorter season sweet pepper varieties. The peppers are large, blocky, and fairly thick-walled, and the plants are very productive and rapidly produce large quantities of usable green peppers that, if left on the plant, ripen to intense chocolate-colored, sweet-flavored maturity.
The medium to large peppers work well raw or cooked, and they make nice, colorful stuffed peppers. Sweet chocolate bells are one of the best heirloom pepper varieties, and are fairly rare. So, if you like the idea of preserving traditional heirloom seeds, saving your own seeds, or maybe even playing with creating your own cultivar, I strongly encourage you to give these peppers a try.
Like most pepper varieties, these are very tender, heavy feeders, and require at least 6 hours of sunlight per day. The plants are large and sprawling, too, and, because they’re prolific producers, you’ll need to stake them or use tomato cages for support.
California Wonder
Days to Germination: 7-21 days
Days to Harvest: 75 days
One of the most popular types of pepper varieties to grow is the California Wonder. This heirloom cultivar first appeared in 1928 and still remains hugely popular today. The fruit of the California Wanda reach about 4 inches in length and are chunky and blocky. They have thick-walled flesh that’s crunchy and full of flavor, making them a great choice for stuffing, frying, or eating raw.
Sweet California Wonder bell peppers take about 75 days to reach maturity, so they’re a smart choice if you have a short or moderate growing season. As with all bell peppers to maximize fruit production, it is important to harvest some fruits while dark green and immature, this encourages further fruit production and a longer growing season. Just remember to leave plenty to reach maturity so you can enjoy the bright red sweet flesh.
Purple Beauty
Days to Germination: 8-25 days
Days to Harvest: 70-80 days
If you grow peppers and want different pepper varieties, the purple beauty pepper is super productive and produces dark purple peppers with thick, tasty green flesh. These open-pollinated heirloom sweet peppers are chunky, lobular, and thick-walled.
Like most peppers, once the purple beauty reaches its full size it turns a dark green, then matures to varying shades of purple royal purple, almost black. Inside, however, the flesh is bright green and extra tasty. Unlike many other colored peppers, when you cook the purple beauty, the skin turns a vibrant green and all traces of purple disappear.
This colorful heirloom pepper has zero spiciness and is super sweet. Purple beauty peppers are up to 8000 times milder than jalapenos.
Yellow Belle
Days to Germination: 12-25 days
Days to Harvest: 65 days
The heirloom yellow belle is a good all-around pepper. These plants are extremely productive, producing copious amounts of sweet thick walled medium-sized bell peppers. This four lobed cultivar is a good choice for short and medium growing seasons because it produces large quantities of ripe peppers early.
Yellow belles are great for stuffing, using in salads, or as a vehicle for dip, and are also great for adding to a stir fry and other culinary delights.
The plant is fairly compact reaching up to 24 inches high and 24 inches wide, making them a good choice for gardens where space is at a premium. Even though these open-pollinated peppers are reasonably compact, because it’s a heavy producer, you’ll still need to stake the plants or use tomato cages to provide support and prevent the branches snapping under their own weight.
They take about 65 days to mature but like most other pepper varieties you can harvest the fruits of the still immature and green. as they ripen the fruits change from a dark green to a bright yellow, with some fruits changing to a vibrant yellow orange once fully ripened.
Red Marconi
Days to Germination: 21-28 days
Days to Harvest: 75 days
Sweet red Marconi peppers are Italian type that produce long thick-walled slender fruits with the tapered end. They can be slow to germinate, taking up to 28 days, so they’ll need sewing early indoors preferably with a heat source. The fruit starts off pale green, change to dark green, before turning to a deep red once fully ripe.
These papers do well in containers, and greenhouses of holy tunnels, or outdoors, but they do need plenty of direct sunlight and warmth, consistent watering just like tomatoes, and they are heavy feeders.
Red Marconi’s are extremely tender, take 85 days to mature, and require at least six hours of full sun daily. The plant is very compact reaching up to 26 inches in height and up to 20 inches in diameter. Like most of the varieties on this list, you’ll need to provide support in the form of steaks or tomato cages.
Best Hybrid Bell Peppers
Now, I know up to this point, I repeatedly said that heirloom sweet pepper varieties are my go-to and the best peppers to grow. However, I know that in some instances, hybrid seeds are the only option. For example, if you live in areas prone to certain diseases all pest infestations, then your only option may be to grow a hybrid strain that is resistant to the issues you face in your local area. To that end, I’ve included a couple of hybrid bell peppers I’ve tried and had good results with.
Bell Boy
Days to Germination: 7-10 days
Days to Harvest: 70-80 days
One of the most common bell pepper hybrids, Bell Boy is prized for its resistance to tobacco mosaic virus (TMV), compact bushy growth habit, and prolific fruit production. And, if you must use a hybrid, then this is one of the best peppers to grow of this type.
If you want to grow sweet peppers but have problems with tobacco mosaic virus or have limited available growing space, then Bell Boy is a good choice.
The fruits of this plant are blocky with a medium size of between four and 6 inches in length. They start off pale green, transforming to a dark green, before the ripe peppers turns bright red.
Bell Boy peppers grow to about 36 inches in height and need to be spaced between 18 and 24 inch apart. They take between 70 and 80 days to mature, so that she is suitable for any growing season length. Although the plants are steady and compact you will still need to provide support. Slightly sweet, with a mild flavor, these peppers are suitable for eating fresh, pickling, cooking, or stuffing. The plants can be grown indoors or out, but need at least six hours of direct sunlight per day.
New Ace
Days to Germination: 14 days
Days to Harvest: 60 days
New Ace F1 is an extremely productive cultivar, making it one of the best hybrid pepper varieties if you want to grow peppers with a high yield to space ratio. They produce well and early, taking about 60 days to mature, and can be grown outdoors even in areas with short, cool summer seasons as long as they receive at least six hours of full sun daily and have some shelter from wind and bad weather. The new ace pepper also performs exceptionally well in polytunnels or greenhouses, producing copious amounts of bright red fruit.
This is another of the hybrid pepper varieties bred for resistance to tobacco mosaic virus. Although it has a comparatively mild flavor, it’s still sweet and tasty with crisp, juicy flesh. The fruits are a medium-size, reaching about 4 inches long and 3 inches wide. They’re versatile too, suitable for cooking and eating.
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FAQs About Sweet Pepper Varieties
California Wonder are the easiest heirloom sweet peppers to grow, because they grow on compact, bushy, robust plants. California Wanda peppers produce huge numbers of medium-sized tasty sweet peppers earlier than many other varieties, making them easy to grow even in areas with shorter summers.
New Ace all the easiest of the hybrid sweet pepper varieties to grow because they produce extremely early, taking only 60 days to mature. They are also resistant to tobacco mosaic virus and grow on fairly compact plants, so the seasonable for growing in most locations.
Some of the most unique purpose to grow are pepper cherries, which are super cute snacking peppers the grow to only an inch. They’re great for eating fresh, cooking, or for making many stuffed peppers for canapes. I’m also a fan of the beautiful rare heirloom sweet chocolate pepper cultivar.
The flesh is an interesting brick red the skin is a beautiful, glossy dark chocolate brown. It’s a fantastically sweet, fresh, full flavored variety that any pepper lover should grow. Similarly, purple beauty bell peppers are a unique variety to try, with showy rich purple skin, and crisp, tender green flesh.
How many peppers you will get from one plant depends on which variety you grow, the length of your growing season, whether you pick a percentage of fruit early, and your local conditions. In challenging conditions, large, thick-walled varieties may only produce 6 to 8 fruits per plant. However, in favorable conditions with a long summer season, plenty of consistent watering, and enough food, small-fruited varieties can produce up to 70 peppers per plant.
There are quite a few ways that you can help your pepper plants to produce more fruit.
- Start your peppers early. Plant your seeds in a heated indoor environment at least eight weeks before the last predicted frost in your area.
- Use a grow light. Using a grow light lets you control how many hours of sunlight your plants are exposed to. That means that during the early days when hours of sunlight a fever, you can use a grow light to extend your seedlings’ exposure, encouraging foster, healthier growth.
- Use high quality soil.when starting your seeds, make sure you choose a high quality seed starting compost. And, to make sure your peppers have everything they need, make sure you build super healthy soil so that when you plant your peppers in their final location, the soil is healthy, full of nutrients, and is able to support your plants.
- Make sure you provide the proper feed for peppers. Just like tomatoes, they’ll need fertilizing in different ways throughout the growing season. During the seedling stage, use a high-nitrogen organic tomato fertilizer. For the foliage growth stage, so for a mid-season, all-purpose, balanced tomato feed. And, for the fruiting stage, choose a high potassium, low nitrogen fertilizer.
- Prune your peppers. Take off the bottom-most leaves to limit the risk of disease. Pinch out the growing tips to encourage bushier, more productive plants. And, strangely, but crucially, nip off the very first flowers so that your plants put more energy into root and foliage production in the early stages so they’ve got more energy and foliage to produce larger amounts of fruit later in the season.