Larry,

There are two possible reasons that the pepper plants you grew from saved seed did not give you peppers this year that were identical to last year's peppers, and they are:

1) Last year's peppers were from a hybrid plant. Hybrids are bred by crossing 2 or more varieties with one another and they are known as an F-1. When you save seed from an F-1 pepper and plant it, you now have the offspring of the F-1 and it is known as the F-2. You only get 'true' seed from crossing those two (or more) original parent varieties that gave you the F-1. Saved F-2 seed gives you 'children' of the F-1 that may or may not resemble the F-1 OR any parent involved in creating the F-1. So, in the same way that a man and a woman create and give birth to children who are NOT their identical genetic clone, F-1 plants do not give birth' to indentical clone plants.

2) If the original pepper was an open-pollinated variety and your saved seed from it did not give you the same pepper, then either the open-pollinated variety was not stable, which means the saved seeds can give you a variety of offspring that are a throwback to something in the pepper's genetic past OR last year's plants were cross-pollinated and your seed is giving you peppers from that cross.

There are literally thousands of pepper varieties so there is no way any of us can guess at what pepper you had last year, and I wouldn't even try.

If it was a bell pepper, most of them get very sweet if allowed to mature to their proper color--whether it is red, orange, yellow, ivory, purple, lilac, etc., as opposed to picking them green. (To me, picking sweet bell peppers at the green stage is just silly.....it is like picking and eating your tomatoes or peaches while they are green. The only people who benefit from picking bell peppers green are those in industrial food production who grow/sell them, because they can pick earlier when they pick them green. It certainly isn't the consumer who might be shocked to discover how good a RIPE (non-green) bell pepper tastes.)

If it was not a bell pepper, there are dozens of possibilities commonly available commercialy, and hundreds more varieties available to members of organizations like Seed Savers Exchange via their yearbook.

Look at the link below from Tomato Growers Supply and see if you see any pepper that reminds you of what you had last year.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Tomato Grower's Supply Sweet Peppers

Dawn,

I saw no pepper that looked just like the ones I am getting. I most often grow Big Bertha, and Calf. Wander.

The mother pepper last year looked like a Big Bertha. The peppers I am getting from the seed are about 3 to 3.5" long with just a slight 3 lobbed look and about as big around as a hoe handle. I believe these are as sweet green as the others were ripe.

Thank you for your help. I will be doing some research trying to find some sweet pepper seed because the pickin is slim in the Ft. Smith area. Larry

Larry
I agree that in some areas the "pickins can get pretty slim". That's why this gal is going to do some "pickin" online and be starting her own seeds from here on out for the most part.

One HUGE issue I have with the big box stores is label switching. Either the growers, or the customers, (more than likely), or kids- switch labels TOO much of the time. One year I bought what I THOUGHT were bells and ended up with cayenne! Grrrrr!! And then another year, I bought what I thought were a nice variety tomato, (forget which), that turned out to be all cherry tomatos. Double grrrr!
Which is another very valid reason for starting your own seeds!

A few years ago I lucked out locally and latched onto some Italian roasting peppers that were so prolific they loaded the bushes down and I had to stake them. The peppers when they turned red and mature were thick walled and 10 to 12 inches long. Since I do a lot of Mediterranean cooking, and grilling I was in hog heaven. But I got complacent and falsely assumed I would be "blessed" with a like selection the next year. Never happened :(

And this year was a dismal failure for a variety of reasons. First of all, I had just returned home from a job, and basically had to start the garden all over again, and it was such a wet spring, (being another issue). By the time I got the garden dried out and went to buy plants, they were mostly either too picked over or gone, and nothing much I wanted anyway.
And then by the time I finally got them in the ground, the heat hit, and they weren't producing.
When Dawn posted that nifty idea to use a bloom booster, I was on it! Now, at last, the few mundane sweet peppers I first planted are coming on late, but strong. And the ones I picked out from that website Dawn posted, are late, but they still might make it before frost.

Ideally, we should be enjoying peppers all summer and into the fall.

You may never be able to replicate your original mystery pepper, but I'll just bet you'll be able to find a good selection on that website, and maybe try out several varieties to see which ones you like best. For sure, that's what I'm going to do. Peppers for my cooking and canning and/or freezing are a definate must have!

Anyways, good luck and blessings in your search for the elusive perfect pepper or peppers! Gotta love em!

Barbara