Not sure where you are located, but I strongly recommend Ace for bells.

http://www.johnnyseeds.com/vegetables/peppers/sweet-bell-peppers/ace-f1-pepper-seed-574.html

Keep in mind Ace is a smaller plant so you don't want to crowd it with larger plants.

Goddess is a good banana pepper you can leave to ripen red, it produced abundantly for me last year. Carmen is often highly recommended, which is a corno di toro pepper.

Well if you got them from Baker Creek they wouldn't be hybrids since I believe they only sell open pollinated types ( I could be wrong on that though). You might have better luck with the hybrids. I have grown Carmen (green to red bulls horn type) for 3 years and it has been productive and ripen much earlier and quicker than most bells. Peter (another GW member) and others have reported very good results with an early red bell called Ace. I will be trying it for the first time this year. Escamillo (yellow bulls horn) is very similar to Carmen in production but not quite as early. All 3 of these are available from Johnny's seeds.

If you can tell us what general area of the world you live we might be able to offer better advice since a lot of Peppers tend not to do to well in the north due to the short growing season.

ETA - Peter types faster than I do!!

Sorry for not including my location. I am just north of Pittsburgh in zone 6A.

LoneJack, you are correct that Baker Creek only sells open pollinated. Last year, we went with those type exclusively and after our pepper disaster, are more than willing to try hybrids this year.

Ace and Carmen are ones that were on my radar so I'm glad to hear the positive comments on those ones. I will look into the other suggestions as well.

I'll third the Carmen F1, it is very productive. I actually grew it side-by-side(in a large pot) with a Sweet Chocolate pepper(an heirloom) and they both did very well.

As a rule the smaller fruited peppers are going to produce a larger quantity of fruit. Your experience with sheepnose pimento and Lipstick are contrary to that so something else could be wrong.

If you had a good harvest with hot Hungarian Wax peppers then a sweet tapered banana pepper should produce equally well. Not aware where you are located there is a chance that a short season small Bell like Cupid, Cute Stuff series or Baby series of mini bells might perform better.

IMHO open pollinated peppers do not do very well in northern gardens, you really need to make sure they don't get chilled (including the soil), there can also be a lot of rain where I live and peppers don't do so well with that either. Of course it is possible to grow them, but more difficult. You are making a good choice to look at hybrid varieties, they tend to be less finicky.

In your area you should be able to grow full season peppers. Why don't you pay a visit to Harvest Valley Farms, Valencia, to see how Dave grows them. Tell Dave that Barrie said hello.

Hi Barrie - I live so close to Harvest Valley you wouldn't believe it. I would hate to bother him with questions but he would certainly have some good suggestions I'm sure. Believe it or not, before we put in a garden we were CSA members of Harvest Valley. Even now that we have a decently large garden, when they are open (they closed this week for the winter), I am a very frequent customer at their market to feet things we don't grow.

Peter, I think you're right. We fell a little in love with the unique/interesting types of heirlooms but I would rather get a steady production of "regular" looking peppers than a repeat of the Great Pepper Disaster of 2016.

I wouldn't cut out heirlooms and open-pollinated varieties altogether, but maybe don't rely on them entirely.

Well there are certainly measures you can take to help ensure your success, such as soil warming with plastic and row covers. You can certainly have success with them(open pollinated varieties) in your climate, don't misunderstand, they are just more finicky and less reliable.

Corno di Toro usually pumps out the peppers. Another prolific sweet pepper, though it looks something like a cayenne, is Jimmy Nardello--sweet and makes great fried peppers.

"Weak and pathetic looking" sounds like a cultural problem, rather than varietal. But if you had no problem with the hots then you shouldn't have had a problem with the sweets as they need the same growing conditions. So why don't you tell us how you grew them first and maybe we can find out why they failed.

In my experience, Lipstick is an awesome pepper. A sturdy plant that should have produced lots. I am very surprised that you had bad luck with them last year.

Rodney

P.S. FWIW, all the peppers I grow are open pollinated except for a couple. The only times I have less than stellar results are when I have done something wrong. Not fertilizing in a timely manner, forgetting to water, growing in a spot that I thought would get more sun than it did, unknowingly planting them where they'd have competition from tree roots, etc.

Whatever the case it is certainly prudent to ask... what did you do differently? The most obvious question is did you plant them in less sun? Peppers need a LOT of sun. One reason why I prefer hybrids is that they are earlier (the ones I grow at least) and more vigorous which makes them more forgiving of my less than ideal sun plot, which compounds the issue of cooler temperatures.

Looking up Lipstick, it is touted as being both early and suited for northern gardens. It is listed as 70 DTM, though for peppers this is usually to a mature green state, add another 20 days for ripe red. That's 70/90. Johnny's lists Ace as 50/70, and Carmen as 60/80, just for comparison. Certainly in the ballpark but a little slower.

Peppers are extremely sensitive to both overwatering and fertilizer burn; it is far more damaging to over-baby them than to just leave them to their own devices IME.

How do you grow your peppers?

db6040 ~ I am also North of Pittsburgh and I grow Red Ace as well. I really like it and I also want to try Carmen this year too. I pull a few Ace plants in the fall and store the plants in 5 gallon buckets with soil in my attached garage. They are overwintering good.

Stacy

Add me to the list of those recommending Carmen. Here's my note from lasts summer:

First Carmen 7/29/16.
Plant already prolific. Should have been caged.

I also grew Gourmet Bell, 58 Days/Early season. A
fabulous bell pepper whose brilliant orange fruits are packed with
melt-in-your-mouth sweetness. Produces
prolific yields of 3-5” fruits with thick walls and crisp flesh that hold their
tender texture through maturity. Ideal
for patio containers, home gardens and greenhouses.

North Star : 60 Days/early season. Extremely early and ideal for short-season areas. Plants are particularly well adapted to set
blocky fruit even under unfavorable conditions.
Deep green fruits become bright red at maturity.

Ozark Giant : 75 Days/Mid-season.
What a pepper! Open pollinated
that produces huge, long bell peppers that have delicious, thick flesh. They mature to a bright red. Vary productive and great flavor.

First pepper consumed
7/27/16. (note on Ozark Giant - unfortunately I didn't keep good notes on all the bell peppers because I was devoting attention to my first year growing a lot of hot peppers.

The above were plants I got from a local backyard grower. Her plants always seems small when I get them mid-May but here in NH they don't usually go in the ground until Memorial Day weekend.

Most of the peppers I grew from seed were hots and I followed instructions from the hot pepper forum. I think key was transplanting early to the large red Solo cups (holes drilled in bottom for drainage) and weekly fertilizing with diluted fish fertilizer. I gave my extras to a neighbor who was amazed at the size of my plants. I started seeds in three batches based on days to maturity. I also put bone meal in each planting hole when I transplanted outdoors.

Carmen is great for fresh eating and grilling but if you want a thick walled pepper for roasting, I think you need a bell. I think hot peppers seem to be more prolific but they are a much smaller pepper. I've liked Carmen because it turns red the soonest for summer sandwiches but it's the bell peppers that get roasted, skinned and put in the freezer as well as sliced raw for freezer.

I've been growing both hot and sweet peppers for many years here in zone 4. I have always had good luck with non-bell sweet peppers. I don't bother much with large traditional type bells.

Here is a list of a few of the non-bell sweets I grow and I have good production from -

Buran

Diablo

Lipstick

Toscano Sweet

Healthy

Carmen

Cuollarice

Sweet Havana

Marconi Red and Marconi Gold

Great small bell types - chocolate, red, yellow and Red Belgian

The best paprika type pepper last year was 'Alma'. She was non-stop!

Sandy

I noticed there is a touted early/Northern tolerant OP sweet bell variety on Baker's Creek - "King of the North".

Sandy, why not give Ace a try for a sweet bell? I am sure you will be pleased. North Star as mentioned above I have seen good things about and I am sure you would be pleased with that as well.

The thing that is great about bells is their nice thick walls for roasting. I grew Biscayne a couple years ago and the walls were paper thin... and they were slower than the Ace. So I would not recommend them. The Goddess banana peppers I grew this year had moderate walls and were super sweet and delicious when ripened red, and decent sized too. I grew Carmen one year, but that was the year I bought all my eggplants and peppers from Bonnie's and they all did abysmally, I also was still a beginner and made several mistakes with them. I don't remember how thick the walls were, I think I got maybe 2 small peppers.

I second Peter with his recommendation of Ace. It performed the best last year out of all of my trials and even edged out my previous favorite Flavorburst. It was an off pepper year and Ace weathered it well. I am trialing Blushing Beauty and Wonderbell this season as these were both highly touted by Burpee and Territorial. I was able to trial Tomcat a few years ago which I received from a Syngenta rep and it was another great variety but almost impossible to find now. I only use peppers for salsa and the occasional use with onions in a stir fry or on bratwurst, so I only grow about 5 plants per season with a Jalapeño thrown in the mix. But, I enjoy trialing new varieties in the pursuit of the "best" so it's fun.

Here is a picture of Flavorburst I included with my review I added on Burpee's website from the 2013 season when it was my top trial variety:

Peter and Hokie -

I believe I have some Ace pepper seeds I received last year in a trade. I'll give Ace a try this year!

Zeedman -

I agree with you on Sweet Chocolate and I do grow it about every other year. I grow Melrose off and on as well, like the flavor and the walls are not thick, but not super thin either. I hadn't' heard of 'Greygo' so I looked it up; it looks to be a nice sweet red pimiento. Might have to give that one a try too.

Sandy

Thanks to everyone for the comments. I have been away for a four day weekend skiing trip in the mountains so missed all of the comments of the last few days. I just got caught up on it and this thread has been so helpful.

A couple people have asked how we grew our peppers. Last year was only our second year with a garden so we are beginners. We have a pretty large space (for a home gardener, not large for a farm of course) and it is in full sun. We started everything from seed and transplanted to raised beds. The sweet peppers just never looked healthy. The hot peppers looked a little weak at first but then took off incredibly. All the peppers were treated the same: started indoors under lights and on a heating pad, hardened off, transplanted right around Memorial Day (any earlier and the soil was not warm enough). They got plenty of sunlight. We watered regularly - perhaps too much? We did not fertilize. Each year before planting we have a giant truckload of compost delivered and we put that in the beds. The soil is very fertile and without any added fertilizer, the hot peppers, eggplants, and tomatoes (and mostly everything else) were very productive. We just seemed to strike out on all the varieties of sweet peppers. I will certainly agree we could have done something wrong - and admit that we didn't fertilize. Maybe that was the problem? It didn't seem to negatively impact our jalapenos, poblanos, habaneros, or cayenne peppers which went absolutely nuts with the production.

The comments here, and a little of my own research, are leading me to try Ace and Carmen next year. I might give Lipstick a second shot as the reviews are so good, it must have been our error that led to the failure. We still have some Lipstick seed but I might just order another pack to ensure the seeds are still good. Sweet chocolate is appealing as well.

Hokiehorticulture, your plants look great. I like your method of staking. Did you tie together branches to essentially make a teepee shape? I might have to try that.

Peppers do not need a lot of fertilizer or water. In my fertile soil, I can go without fertilizing them at all. In my wettish climate I can almost go without watering them either. How much were you watering?

It's hard to quantify how much we were watering but I was wondering at the time if it was too much. The problem is that the weather got hot pretty fast and we were concerned things were drying out. We watered frequently after transplanting.

Yeah peppers don't like that. They like to dry out quite a bit between waterings. Stick your finger deep in the soil and unless it is dry several inches down, they probably don't need water. If there is a good rain at least once a week I don't water them at all, even in summer. But it depends on your soil too. Mine holds moisture fairly well.

db6040, keep trying. I grew quite a few varieties this year of both sweet and hot peppers. I tend to get one plant each of several different bell peppers. Carmen always produces well for me but I also like thick walled bells. One variety was a dud. The plant next to it was leaning over from the weight of all the peppers. I got my bell pepper plants from a local backyard grower who will sell small individual plants.

Now I'm going to have to check my notes and NOT order the dud this year.

This is Carmen about 7/27/16 in my NH garden - cold end of zone 5.

defrost, we will certainly give it another go this year. Ace and Carmen look like good ones to give a whirl. Your plants look great.