Are red, yellow and orange peppers the same plant?

No. Ripe colour is a genetic property of the cultivar. Red, yellow and orange are separate genotype classes with separate cultivars, while green is a harvest stage — a green-harvested crop still has a genetic ripe colour that is recorded separately.

Crops · Fruiting vegetable

Sweet pepper.

Q: What kind of climate does sweet pepper ask for?

A steady one. The crop is sensitive to the balance between vegetative and generative growth and responds to that balance over weeks rather than days. A climate system that holds a steady relationship between temperature and light holds a steady set; one that swings produces a crop that flushes and then stalls.

A long crop where colour is the product.

Grow sweet peppers under glass The varieties

What the extra weeks put in the fruit

Sweet pepper is eaten for vitamin C before anything else, and the fruit does not start out carrying it. The pepper reaches full size first and then keeps working. Through the weeks it takes to turn from green to its ripe colour, sugar and vitamin C keep accumulating, and a fruit carried to colour ends up with far more of both than the same fruit cut early. Colour on the shelf is a record of how long the plant was allowed to keep going.

Those weeks are the grower’s side of the bargain. Fruit held for colour occupies plant capacity, heat and light that a green pick would have released, which is why the ripe classes carry a premium and why harvest stage is settled before a greenhouse is designed.

Neither stage improves after cutting. A pepper is picked at the stage it will be eaten at, so time in a container comes off the shelf life rather than adding to the fruit. A greenhouse near its market can hold the crop on the plant until the order is placed and deliver in the same week, in winter as readily as in summer.

Nutrition facts

Sweet pepper, red, raw

Per 100 g

Energy: 26 kcal
Fat: 0.3 g
Carbohydrate: 6.03 g
Sugars: 4.2 g
Fiber: 2.1 g
Protein: 0.99 g
Sodium: 4 mg
Potassium: 211 mg
Vitamin C: 127.7 mg

Source: USDA FoodData Central, FDC 170108

Which sweet pepper?
The commercial classes.

Colour, size and quality at harvest. The class you sell decides the plant load, the harvest rhythm and the house.

Green Bell Peppers

Green bell pepper is fruit picked before it colours, a harvest stage rather than a colour genotype.

Orange Bell Peppers

Orange bell pepper is its own genotype class with its own cultivars, not a red pepper picked at a different moment.

Red Bell Peppers

Red bell pepper is the reference block pepper of Dutch production, carried on the plant until it colours fully.

Red Pointed Peppers

Red pointed pepper is a conical, elongated sweet pepper sold for its sweetness and for roasting and grilling.

Snack Peppers

Snack pepper is a market and pack idea more than a defined botanical type: small sweet peppers sold in mixed-colour punnets to be eaten whole.

Yellow Bell Peppers

Yellow bell pepper is its own genotype class with its own cultivars, not a red pepper picked at a different moment.

Yellow Pointed Peppers

Yellow pointed pepper is the yellow-ripening conical sweet pepper, distinct from both the yellow block pepper and the red pointed type.

Sweet pepper is a long-cycle crop planted once and carried through most of the year, and its economics turn on ripe colour. A pepper picked green and a pepper carried to red are the same plant doing different amounts of work, and the extra weeks on the plant are paid for in light, heat and fruit that could have been harvested earlier. The choice of harvest stage is therefore a commercial decision made before the house is designed, not a picking preference settled later.

What the crop needs

The plant is grown on substrate and carried on a high wire, with a slower set and a heavier fruit than cucumber. It is sensitive to the balance between vegetative and generative growth, and it responds to that balance over weeks rather than days. A climate system that holds a steady relationship between temperature and light will hold a steady set; one that swings will produce a crop that flushes and then stalls.

What separates the varieties

Ripe colour is a genetic property of the cultivar, not a harvest choice, and this is the distinction that most often goes wrong in planning. Red, yellow and orange are separate genotype classes with separate cultivars. Green is a harvest stage, and a green-harvested crop still has a genetic ripe colour that has to be recorded separately. Pointed peppers are a different product again, with their own fruit mass and plant architecture, and they are spaced and supported accordingly.

DutchGreenhouses® specifies the structure, climate, screening and irrigation around the pepper type, its harvest stage and the local climate, so the house supports the colour being sold rather than pepper in the abstract. Get in touch to plan a pepper greenhouse.

The greenhouse behind sweet peppers