What it is
Bell Pepper (Capsicum annuum) is in the Solanaceae (Nightshade) family. Sweet, crunchy, and endlessly useful — the gateway pepper that handles Texas heat better than tomatoes do.
How to grow it
It wants full sun, 6–8 hr, water it even, 1–1.5 in/week, and give it rich, well-drained soil. Target a soil pH around 6.0–6.8. Space plants about 18 in apart. Expect roughly 60–90 from transplant. Warm-season annual.
How it's used
Bell Pepper is used: raw, roasted, stuffed, frozen.
🔎 How to identify it
- Glossy lobed fruit hanging downward
- White star flowers at leaf joints
- Smooth non-spiny stems, bushy habit
Edibility
How to grow & propagate bell pepper
Everything I've worked out about starting this one, keeping it alive through a Texas year, and turning one plant into many — free.
How to propagate bell pepper
Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and their cousins are warm-season crops started inside 6–8 weeks before your last frost, then transplanted out once nights stay above 50°F. Tomatoes are the exception to most rules — you can bury the stem deep or root a side shoot (a 'sucker') in water to clone a plant mid-season. Potatoes skip seed entirely and grow from seed potatoes — chunks of tuber with an eye or two.
Growing bell pepper in Texas
Give it full sun, 6–8 hr and rich, well-drained soil. Match the spot to the plant and most of the battle is already won.
Time your planting to our long warm season and watch the frost dates at both ends; the live weather tool on this site is built for exactly that.
In a container it'll dry faster than in the ground, so check the top inch of soil daily in summer; pots on a hot Texas patio can need water every single day.
Harvesting
Figure on roughly 60–90 from transplant before you're harvesting. Harvest at peak and keep harvesting — most vegetables produce harder the more you pick, and one left to over-mature tells the plant its job is done. The part you're after: ripe fruit (green through red).
Making more for free
Every seed we sell is open-pollinated, which means you can save your own from the best plants and it'll grow true next year. Let a few of your strongest plants finish and go to seed, dry it fully, and store it cool and dark. That's the whole point of heirlooms — buy once, grow forever.
Part of the free Texas Roots plant database, compiled by Jordan Polasek from his greenhouse in El Campo, Texas. Free to read and share. If it helped, the best thanks is to grow something.