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.

Sweet pepper — DutchGreenhouses

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.

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.

Sweet pepper

The varieties

Red bell peppers

The Dutch block-pepper baseline, carried to ripe colour.

Yellow bell peppers

A separate genotype class, not a shade of red.

Orange bell peppers

A separate genotype class, not a shade of red.

Green bell peppers

A harvest stage, not a colour genotype.

Red pointed peppers

A conical sweet pepper with its own spacing and support.

Yellow pointed peppers

The yellow conical sweet pepper, usually packed beside the red.

Snack peppers

A pack concept before it is a crop.

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.