Sweetest pepper you've ever grown

Hi all,

I'm on a quest to find a pepper that I grew years ago or (more likely) a replacement. The one I grew was mislabeled. It was a small (2" long) cone shaped pepper that turned a gorgeous bright red when fully ripe and I promise was almost a sweet as a candy.

I'm in the desert, large bell types don't do well for me. But any of the long lean, small bell and small cone shapes do just fine. I'm not picky about color. Just want delicious sweet flavor :)


Any ideas from you all would be MUCH appreciated. If you have 10 or so seeds you'd be willing to share, please see my trade list or I'd be happy to remimburse postage and mailing envelope

Chris

I like Buran, Lipstick, and of course Yummy Orange. I have some fresh saved seed from my plants. But be forewarned. They were not isolated and I grow about ten varieties in close proximity to each other, some of which are hot. So if you want to roll the dice, I'll be happy to help you out. I can't really tell from your description what you had formerly grown, but either Buran or Lipstick would be good choices. Lipstick is sold by Baker Creek and the Pepper Gal has Buran. Check their descriptions and photos out on their website

This message was edited Sep 4, 2014 11:27 AM

This message was edited Sep 4, 2014 11:38 AM

The sweetest pepper that I know of is Shepard's Rams Horn. It doesn't sound like the one you describing but it might be a good replacement. The fruit on this one are bigger but SUPER sweet. It is a rare Italian frying pepper....you can find it in DGs Plant Files.

I'm from the San Fernando Valley so I'm familiar with your area. Bells don't do well in a lot of areas and Cactusman has some great suggestions you might also look into Marconis, which are another Italian Frying pepper. I hardly ever grow bells anymore, I stick to sweet non-bells, the yield and quality of the fruit is so much better.

Yes, I have seeds for some varieties, if you find something you want to try. I'm sorry that nobody answered you earlier June can be a really busy month for gardeners. Good luck.

I picked some of the two sweetest pepper varieties I know just this morning. Ljubov Dlan is a big, sweet red pepper from the Balkans, and seeds are available and very reasonably priced from Mario Plantosar marioplantosar@gmail.com in Croatia. He has some other nifty local varieties also.

Yummy Orange is a Bonnie Plant Farm variety originally from Czechoslovakia, and their seedlings are sold by Lowe's and WalMart in the spring as well as seeds being available (I think) from Johnny's Selected Seeds. GOOD sweet peppers, both of those!

Thanks for the input folks. I've grown out all of the peppers easily available from Lowes, walmart and Home depot in my area.

Cactusman, I don't know what it was either. It was labeled Antohi roumanian, but, I purchased seeds from a few places for AR. I've tried lipstick but I've never heard of Buran

They grew a nicely productive white ripening to orange red, fat, thick fleshed elongated bells. It just wasn't what I was looking for but has become one to the regulars.

What I grew that 1st year was as described above. About the size of czechoslavakian black cone shaped peppers. Bright red when ripe.

I've grown Marconis, my standard for sweet frying peppers is Giant Aconcagua. It's consistently productive. I don't try for bells anymore.

lisac and ozark, thanks for the tips.
I will check into

Shepard's Rams Horn
Ljubov Dlan
Buran

Thanks again for the suggestions, any others?

dsrtgdn - If you order Ljubov Dlan (Luke's Palm) seeds from Mario Plantosar in Croatia (email address in my post above), there are a couple of others you'd want to try also.

Slonovo Uho (Elephant’s Ear) – Croatian. Similar to Ljubov Dlan, but even bigger according to reports. Enormous red, thick-walled, very sweet pepper.

Kurtovska Kapija (Kurtovska’s Crown) – Kurtovska is a town in Bulgaria. These three varieties are all similar large open-pollinated sweet peppers. They’re grown by home gardeners and on a large scale commercially for the making of Ajvar, a condiment paste of roasted red sweet peppers and eggplants that’s eaten on bread or crackers. Apparently folks in the whole Balkan region are crazy about Ajvar - search for Ajvar on YouTube and you’ll see what I mean. I haven't made any yet, but I've gone through a couple of imported jars of Ajvar from a European market here, and it is good.

Of these "paprika" varieties I've only grown Ljubov Dlan so far, and that was for the first time this year - it's a wonderful, giant, super-sweet, thick-walled pepper with a LOT of meat in it. It makes me wonder why in the world we even mess with bell pepper varieties here in the U.S. - Ljubov Dlan is far superior to any bell, in my opinion, and it's plenty big enough for stuffing.

I have seeds now for all three of these peppers, and I'm looking forward to growing them next season. I think it's great finding sweet peppers this good that are hardly known about outside of the Balkans.

Thanks Ozark,

I'm glad I posted. None of these sound like the variety I grew that year, but I'll have some new ones to try for 2015 and that's always cool.

Thanks everyone