Well, I never have one favorite, but I probably can narrow it down to 3 or 4. I always like to let my peppers mature to their ripe color too.

Blushing Beauty always produces well for me. If I transplant the plants into the ground in early to mid-May, I usually am harvesting in July. They are very heavy producers. I have to stake the plants early in the growing season or the weight of the peppers will bring them down to the ground. I think Blushing Beauty's DTM is about 70-72 days, but I think they produce in about 65 days in my garden.

Another good one is Roumanian Rainbow, which produces ripe peppers about a week earlier in my garden than Blushing Beauty.

For really early peppers (although they barely beat Roumanian Rainbow), I grow the Mini Belle Blend from Totally Tomatoes. They produce in slightly less than two months from their transplant date, and produce heavily all summer long. The plants are supposed to be 24" tall, but they sometimes get 3' or taller in my garden.

Last year, I planted Renee's Garden Seeds' blended packet that had three varieties (a red, an orange and a yellow) in one seed packet. The seeds are dyed with food coloring so you know which seed produces which color pepper. They were healthy, produced heavily all summer long and the peppers were tasty. I've linked them below and intend to grow them again this year. (For what it is worth, every vegetable variety from Renee's that I've ever planted has performed in an absolutely perfect manner. Clearly Renee has high standards and chooses what she feels are the best varieties available, and it shows in how well they perform.)

I grew Yummy Orange (a sweet non-bell) from a purchased transplant for the first time last year and liked it so much that I ordered seeds of Yummy to grow this year. Totally Tomatoes has Yummy Orange and Yummy Mix.

All the 'Beauty' line have done very well here today, especially 'Chocolate Beauty' and 'Purple Beauty'. And, I always grow 'Lilac" for its gorgous color and great flavor.

I start my pepper seed long with my tomato seeds on Super Bowl Sunday, which usually is the first Sunday in February. I don't transplant the peppers out into the garden until about 2 weeks after I set out all the tomatoes, which means the peppers probably make it into the ground the first week of May most years. (I have to wait for my last frost, which has been consistently hitting us on May 3rd the last 3 or 4 years, even though our so-called "average last frost" date is March 27th.) So, while I may transplant tomatoes into the ground in mid-April and cover them up on cold nights, I keep the peppers inside until those cold nights pass.

Pepper plants, if exposed to temperatures in the 40s for even a fairly brief period, can stall and remain unproductive for weeks and weeks or even months. I use a meat thermometer (not the same one I use in the kitchen!)to check my soil temperature at planting depth and don't plant until my soil is at or above 55 degrees for 3 or 4 days in a row. Since exposure to cool temperatures can have such a drastic effect on a pepper's productivity long after it is transplanted into the ground, I keep my peppers inside on the plant shelf long after the tomato transplants are hardening off on the back porch. Even when the peppers come outside during the day to harden off, I put them back inside before temps drop very much in the evening. I've found that makes a real difference in how well they produce.

I hope this info helps in some way.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Renee's Jewel Tone Sweet Bell Mix

Dawn, I intended to order Yummy but forgot to put it on my order, but I have more than I can plant anyway. I only have one thing to add. I planted Purple Beauty this year for the first time, and they were the earliest bells in my garden. Once it got hot, they slowed down but by then the others were coming on. I will plant Purple Beauty again just because of WHEN it produces in my garden.

Carol,

I will happily send you some Yummy seeds when I send the seed swap seeds. (I know you didn't ask, but I am offering.) You know I don't need a whole packet.

That's a good point about Purple Beauty as they are very early. I find most of the peppers I raise from seed are much earlier than their official DTMs would lead you to believe, and the same is true of many tomato varieties too. I remember that I was harvesting jalapenos in June last year which seems insane since I cannot put them into the ground until early May because of the cold nights. I do think keeping them from being exposed to cold nights for as long as I possibly can does cause them to produce earlier. The early onset of very hot weather also probably pushed those jalapeno peppers long at high speed, but the first Purple Beauty peppers were ready to harvest even before the jalapenos.

When I was a younger gardener, and less experienced with Oklahoma's sometimes persistently cold spring nights, I would set out my peppers at the same time I set out my tomatoes. (Hey, it worked just fine in zone 8 Fort Worth!) They wouldn't produce until much later than expected and I couldn't figure out why they were so sluggish. After I finally figured out the cold nights were hurting them and changed my planting time, they have performed so much better.....just another lesson learned the hard way. : )

The peppers that overwinter in the garage usually bloom and set fruit in January, and I suspect they may start forming blooms in response to increasing daylength because the buds start forming right after the winter solstice. However, those winter peppers are mind-numbingly slow to grow, size up or mature. I only have two pepper plants in the garage this year. I meant to pot up more to overwinter, but space in the garage is so limited. Also, the more plants I have in pots, the more I have to drag outside every morning and inside again at night. One of these days I'll have a greenhouse and I will overwinter lots of potted pepper plants in it.

There's always a chance, too, that my garage plants will freeze on a night that goes much colder than expected. The three biggest dogs sleep in there at night and they put off some body heat (Duke is at least 140 lbs. so he puts off a lot of body heat all by himself) and I have the plants near their dog crates in the hope that they'll stay a bit warmer. Last year they got too cold on one night when it went down to single digits and dropped leaves and looked dead. Some branch tips did dieback, but what was left of all the plants leafed right back out 7-10 days later and started blooming very soon thereafter. Part of the problem with my system is that if the overlow is going below 15 degrees, I let the 'garage dogs' sleep inside, and that removes the plants' heat source. Putting a heater out there is not practical in economic terms because the barn-style garage is 1200 square feet and has a very high peaked roof (there's a second-story storage loft in part of it) so it would cost more to heat it than I care to spend to keep less than a dozen plants alive.

Dawn

I agree with Dawn about the cool temps affecting peppers. Especially hot peppers. I was taught to transplant them when I planted okra or too just sow the seed and let it germinate when the temps was right. I was talking to a friend this summer. Her Father grew a large garden in the area of NM where I was raised. He raised lots of chilies and Jalapenos. He also sowed his in the ground like many of the other older growers did. They transplanted tomatoes but direct sowed peppers. His and the others that direct sowed were usually mature as early or earlier as those that were transplanted and overall out produced the transplants especially if they were set out early. I've had several growers tell me that they have learned that sweet peppers can withstand more coolness without setting them back. I might try that this year as an experiment. I know Dawn sets out in soil temps a little cooler than I would and seems to get along fine. I tend to agree with an older grower I knew. He said that in the area we are in he felt the cooler morning air temps can set them back as bad as the cooler soil temps. Our cooler air temps may only last 1-2 hours of the early morning so doesn't affect soil temps much. Last year I watched and our soil temps weren't much different than say OKC. But we were having a lot cooler early mornings. I think maybe that by the time Dawn's soil temps rise she might not experience the cooler early morning air temps to the extent I do being further north and west like I am. Again just my thoughts and opinions. Jay

Dawn, Jay, Carol - thanks for your "thoughts and opinions" - that's exactly what I need. The seed catalogs all say "wonderful, early, good production", but I want opinions from people like me that live somewhere close to my area and that garden the way we do. I think I may be putting my peppers out too early and maybe that's why they don't produce any earlier. Dawn, I have my TT order ready to go so will add the Mini Bell Blend - I considered those earlier, but now will order for sure.
Glenda

Glenda, Believe me, it was a real eye-opening experience the first time I deliberately planted peppers a couple of weeks later than tomato plants and had marvelous and early production.

As Jay noted, I can set out peppers when soil temps are fairly cool here because our air temps heat up pretty early as far south as I am. The biggest enemy of early pepper planting for me is the occasional very cold night that hits us early in May.

Since the temps heat up so fast here in southern OK, I have to set out nice, healty sweet pepper plants that are about as large as I can get them to grow in 12 weeks indoors because heat affects their flowers the same way it affects the pollination/fertilization of tomato blooms. Oddly, though, hot peppers don't seem impacted in the same way as they bloom and set fruit all summer long.

I keep waiting for plant breeders to figure out why hot pepper flowers don't suffer from heat-related blossom drop like sweet peppers do and then (hopefully) to breed new varieties of sweet peppers that don't suffer blossom drop. It does seem like the smaller the sweet pepper variety, the less the heat impacts the blossoms, and that is true of tomatoes as well.

And, yes, if we all believed every word in the seed catalogs, we'd be in trouble, wouldn't we? I rely so much more on the opinions of folks growing in our climate than the words of catalog copy writers. Naturally they want us to believe everything grows/produces everywhere, but we know that's not true.

Dawn

how many days from transplanting of sweet pepper does it starts to bloom or set flowers?

Dawn, Thanks for the pepper offer and I should have ordered them. If I have something you want, I would be happy to trade.

Carol, No trade is necessary. It's just my way of saying "thank you" for all the work you put into the swap.

Leah, There are too many variables to give you a really firm number because it would depend on the size/age of the plant when it was transplanted, the fertility of the soil (too much nitrogen inhibits blossoming), and the daytime and nighttime temperatures and soil temperature. Different peppers flower and form fruit at different rates too, because some may give you mature peppers in 60 days and others in 80 days or longer.

Having said all that, if you put transplants into the ground that are about 7 to 8 weeks old (or even 10 weeks old) and you are transplanting them when the soil temps are remaining above 55 degrees (even at night) and your air temps are staying between 60-80 degrees, then you should have blooms within a couple of weeks of transplanting the plants into the ground.

At the time the first flowers form, be sure you're keeping the soil moist (though not sopping wet) and be sure the soil has good fertility. It doesn't hurt to sidedress the plants with a good fertilizer about the time they bloom. If pepper plants are moisture-stressed or lack good nutrients in the soil when the first flowers form, then often the plants will sit and stall and be nonproductive because they don't have the nutrition or water available to get the first fruits growing. So, in a way, you success (or lack of such) with peppers often depends on meeting their needs during that first critical period of bloom set.

Hope this info helps,

Dawn