Bell Pepper 'California Wonder'

Midlands, South Carolina
Hot, humid summers 100 degrees/75% rH
Long growing season: 275 days
No-till, compost and ma...Read Morenure cultivation

The California Wonder pepper, or "Cali's," as I call them, are my single most dependable sweet pepper variety.
I try others to mix it up, but I always have some Cali's going in the garden.
I have winter sown them with success, and they grow on all season. There is a lull in the hottest part of summer (JUL-AUG), but they spring back and grow right on until winter sets in hard, sometime in November.
If one were to ask ME what is the best sweet pepper to grow, I would not hesitate to say, "Grow you some Cali's!"

It is too early to say but I am quite excited about the results I am seeing from this plant already. Last year I bought some bell pepper...Read More plants from Walmart, I cared for them they grew well but produced nothing, yes nothing. Something like that tends to affect your enthusiasm and those plants there aren't cheap, but this is Texas and peppers should have no real problems growing here. I put it partly down to where I bought those plants from and a week of storms which did some damage to some of my plants, although the pepper plants seemed healthy.

This year 2010, undaunted, I decided not to go down the Walmart path, and bring on my own seeds instead. I planted 15 seeds from a packet into a large pot, and waited. For a while there was little sign of anything happening, they were weeks behind my tomatoes and other plants. However in the end they did show up, and right now they are growing bushy and fast, in the past week they have doubled in size.

I planted 15 seeds and got 15 healthy strong plants. Right now they are as big as the plants for sale in Walmart or Home Depot. The leaves are very healthy looking. I'm ready to separate them and see how they grow from here. I'll be doing a little homework and reading there before I proceed, because I am quite inexperienced with peppers. It looks very good at this point. I hope to post some photos and my findings as the season goes on. Forget Walmart, plant the seeds and wait.

I should say that I used what was on hand, my magic gro for tomatoes, I was watering both plant types at the same type and the peppers seem to have responded very well to it. I'm sure there are products more suited to peppers, but the plants seem to like it. I can see me taking peppers much more seriously next year.

Good Bell Pepper better if it is used when green color and not red. Red it has a slightly bitter taste.

I grew these peppers last year against Big Dipper. I prefer the Big Dippers over Californina Wonders because the Big Dippers produced la...Read Morerger and more peppers. However, Californina Wonders tasted good and produced well. California Wonders still produced smaller peppers after most of the Big Dippers stopped producing. California Wonders are worth growing and will do well in the south but they may not be the best choice.