How to distinguish hot pepper seedlings from sweet ones

This article will help you understand the difference between bitter pepper seedlings and sweet pepper seedlings, as well as get to know each species in more detail and find out their features.

Pepper types, main features

Every experienced gardener, not to mention newbies in this business, at least once in his life confused seedlings peppers and, as a result, instead of one supposed variety, another variety grew. Sound familiar? In this article, we will tell you how to distinguish seedlings of sweet pepper varieties from hot pepper varieties, if you suddenly forgot, lost, threw away or accidentally confused pieces of paper with the names of varieties, and also tell you why sweet and bitter peppers are recommended to be planted separately.

Pepper - an annual plant and also the most popular spice obtained from the fruits of these plants.

All varieties of peppers (and there are more than 2,000 species of them in nature), grown both in open ground and in greenhouses, can be divided into two groups:

1. Hot pepper - a type of pepper with small fruits that have a distinctive pungent-burning flavor. The degree of pungency and pungency is determined according to the existing ten-point scale. The pungency of the pepper depends on the climatic conditions of growing - if the pepper was grown in a dry and cool region - the fruits will be less pungent, and the pepper that grew in heat with a humid climate will be more pungent. The hottest are chili and tabasco peppers.

2. Sweet pepper, or as I also call it - salad pepper - a type of pepper that has large fruits with a characteristic sweet and spicy-sweet taste. For example, the variety "Gogoshary", it is a sweet pepper, while its taste is spicy-sweet, but the pungency is softer than that of the types of hot pepper. The most popular varieties are Duet,Winnie the Pooh"," Topolin ","Martin" and others.

It is worth noting that varieties of sweet and bitter peppers must be planted separately, since they will pollinate each other, which will lead to a change in the taste of each - bitterness can be observed in sweet pepper, negative taste changes are also noticed in bitter, plus the loss of useful trace elements. With the neighborhood of two peppers, the burning one will already be of a completely different variety, all this is due to pollination.

It follows that bitter and sweet peppers must be planted in different places. The minimum distance between hot pepper beds from sweet pepper beds is 20 meters. If this condition is not met, then, as a result, the harvest of the re-pollinated peppers will have a large size, which is characteristic of a sweet variety and a burning taste, like those of hot pepper varieties.

It is worth drawing your attention to the fact that these two types of peppers are related to each other, and their main difference is that hot pepper contains such an element as capsaicin - this is an alkaloid that gives the pepper a pungency.

In some Asian countries, it is purposefully practiced planting two types of pepper next to each other, this is done to achieve an unusual burning taste in salad peppers.

Distinguishing seedlings of sweet pepper from bitter

It is extremely difficult for an inexperienced gardener to distinguish seedlings, so always sign the seedlings. If you still forgot where what kind of pepper you have planted, and there are no signed papers for certain reasons either, there are a number of time-tested methods that allow you to distinguish sweet and bitter pepper plants from each other.

We offer you 3 effective methods:

1. Visual difference. Seedlings of the two types of pepper have significant differences in the color of the foliage, in their shape, in the thickness of the stem.

Hot peppers have long foliage, which is inherent in a more elongated shape and has a dark color. The leg of the plant is thin, elongated.

Sweet pepper has short foliage, with a pronounced wide shape, light color, foliage structure is more delicate than that of bitter varieties. Sweet peppers also have a shorter and chunky stem.

But there are times when the seedlings of both bitter and sweet peppers have grown equally strong, the foliage does not differ, then in this case, this method does not work and other methods should be connected.

2. Taste differences. When the pepper seedlings have grown and full foliage has formed, then you can resort to a very interesting way of determining which variety is in front of us - bitter or sweet pepper. To do this, you need to bite a leaf of the plant, and be sure if you feel the juice of a bitter aftertaste - this is definitely a variety of hot pepper.

3. The moment of flowering. If the visual method did not work, and the taste buds malfunction, then the third method will dispel doubts one hundred percent and show the sweet or hot pepper plant in front of you. In this case, you need to wait for the budding period of the peppers, and here we draw your attention to the fact that in hot peppers this period occurs earlier than in sweet ones.

There is another way to determine the differences, but it is possible only if on the seedlings you find the seed that you sowed for cultivation. The seed must be removed, rinsed well and again trust your taste buds. If the seed has a bitter taste, it is a hot pepper seedling.

Applying our tips and methods in practice, you will surely easily determine which type of pepper in front of you is sweet or bitter. Better yet, do not forget to sign the seedlings, so as not to complicate your life. Once again, we draw attention to the fact that if you do not want your varieties to mix, but so that the sweet pepper is sweet, and the bitter pepper with its piquant pungency, plant the peppers as far away from each other as possible.