I have always been a fan of sweet peppers and chilies (peperocini). The countless shapes and colors of different fruits, but also the lush green of the plants beautify every garden in my opinion!
I have tried a large number of varieties and haven’t finished my work yet. Close to an absolute favorite is the sweet bell pepper called “Ochsenhorn”. A variety that produces so-called pointed peppers, available in the colors yellow, red and orange. Compared to today’s F1 varieties with high yields (especially block peppers), the fruits of pointed peppers taste sweet like candy. Anything but tart and bitter, they enhance any sauce and are particularly suitable for eating raw thanks to their excellent flavor. The plants produce bright, flawless fruits every year in my tunnel, and they appear almost artificial in huge quantities.
Although, as can be seen in the picture above, the plants are heavily laden with fruit, first impressions are often deceptive. As mentioned above, hybrid plants (F1 varieties) are far superior in terms of yield to non-hybrid plant varieties. As I do every year, I weighed all the fruit in 2023 to be able to carry out a harvest survey. Looking back on the growing season, 2023 was a thoroughly ideal year for peppers, with a not-too-hot summer followed by very warm and sunny fall days in September. From 22.07.2023 to 15.09.2023, fruit was harvested several times a week until the season finally ended on 25.09.2023. Amazingly, since I started keeping records in 2018, the yields have been around 2 kg of marketable fruit per plant every year, regardless of the weather conditions. The statistics for 2023 are as follows; a total of 32 of each color were planted. A total of 64.6 kg of yellow fruit, 61.0 kg of orange fruit and 58.6 kg of red fruit were harvested. This results in an average yield per plant of 2.0 kg for yellow-fruited plants, 1.9 kg for orange-fruited plants and 1.8 kg for red-fruited plants.
This means that my yield is far below the standard yields expected in organic vegetable growing, namely 3 to 5 kg/plant (source: Handbuch für Beratung und Praxis; Ökologischer Gemüsebau 2017). I strongly assume that this difference can be explained by the choice of my bell pepper variety. All other parameters that also have a major influence on the yield of peppers, such as temperature, pollinators, wind speed, fertilization, soil pH, irrigation and light conditions were always optimal in my cultivation system in 2023.
This raises a very important question: “Should I/you grow pointed peppers at all?” Their long cultivation, intensive care (constant tying up and breaking out) and precise monitoring of the water balance for optimum fruit quality are so labor-intensive that the low yield is even less worthwhile than it already is. Every year, the incredible quality of the fruit has delighted my consumers and me, and I have made the decision to grow pointed peppers again. From an economic point of view, it must be clearly stated that the cultivation of pointed peppers is only worthwhile for direct marketing presses in Switzerland. As a private individual, however, I wouldn’t want to be without them in any vegetable garden, they taste too good. I can only encourage everyone to try growing them themselves!