Purple Peppers

2023 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-07-30 21:03

Such different peppers

Ask any person: what is pepper? And in principle, you will get a laconic answer: this is a vitamin vegetable - red, cubic, tasty, sweet and aromatic.

However, pepper, like no other vegetable crop, is very diverse in color, shape and taste. It turns out that if you do not dwell only on the practical value of peppers, then a pepper garden can be turned into a corner no less beautiful than a flower garden. How nice it is to come to her every morning, not only in search of delicious fruits, but also for a good mood.

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Last year I experimented with multi-colored peppers. Purple varieties delighted me with their beauty and pleasant taste. These varieties were at their best, having withstood the test of the weather. They have a protective mechanism, which is contained in the unique color of the fruit. Anthocyanin is a purple pigment, it is it that colors the berries of currants, honeysuckle, and irgi in blue-black tones. Their winter hardiness is very high. So the pepper becomes more tolerant of cold snaps, especially when not only the fruits, but also the stems and leaves contain anthocyanin.

Red Black Bull variety

Altai Chameleon variety

Variety Altayskiy Black

In July, the purple color is not particularly needed for pepper plants, but in the spring, until the real summer warmth has come, or in the fall, when only memories remain from that heat, anthocyanins help to catch the sun's rays, like a kind of filter that chooses the best for itself. Anthocyanins are present in almost all plants, only their forms are different. And the substances in the environment of which they are located are also different, and the quantities of the pigments themselves are also not the same. It depends on this how much solar energy these substances will convert into thermal energy, which will allow not only the plants to survive in cold times, but also to give a crop, that is, seeds to prolong their genus.

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Anthocyanins have always been present in plants, that is, in leaves, but chlorophyll does not allow them to manifest themselves for the time being, and breeders have taught pepper anthocyanins to be independent compounds that do not obey chlorophyll. This is how the varieties of purple and black peppers were born.

Violet and black pigment appears clearly only in the technical ripeness of the fruit.

Klyaksa variety

Black Marconi variety

Variety Purple Bell

The varieties Altai Chameleon, Blot, Violet Star of the East, Lilak Lovender, Purple Bell, Purple Beauty, Purple, Bagheera, Lilac fog, Lilac, Purple apple have purple color.

Black fruits in the varieties Black Handsome, Black, Bull, Black Horse, Purple Miracle, Black Maraconi, Black Cardinal, Black Star of the East, Altai Black, Africa, Red Black Bull.

All these varieties are similar: in technical ripeness they have different shades of purple and black, and in biological ripeness they become red or ruby-dark red.

I think that the most interesting of these is the Gypsy Baron pepper. The plant is only 45 cm tall, but it takes only 87-95 days to take the first crop. It strikes from the first loops of seedlings - already at the stage of cotyledonous leaves it turns purple, and later the leaves and even flowers shimmer with purple. Fruits are pyramidal, no more than 7 cm long, grow in bunches upward (in a bouquet), they are blue-violet-black in color, when fully ripe they acquire a pearl-violet-red color. They give a huge harvest.

Pepper is my weakness, and every year I set aside many beds for it, and take care of it in a special way. Here are some tips for growing peppers and producing a great harvest.

Agrotechnics of peppers

You need to grow peppers only through seedlings and in a greenhouse or on window sills in more northern regions. Only such plants when transplanted into open ground will be strong and healthy. In order for the seedling to develop powerful, it is necessary to remove all the leaves from it below the fork of the stem.

At the age of two months, we transplant seedlings in open ground. Northern gardeners transfer the seedlings to greenhouses. The bushes should be watered and carefully transferred from the cups along with a lump of earth. It is imperative to ensure that the root collar is not buried in the soil during transplantation, otherwise the plant will decay.

For more peppers to be born, the distance between them should be at least 30 cm. As the plants grow, they need to be tied to pegs.

Variety Cardinal black

Variety Blot yellow

Variety Purple Bell

Peppers love frequent but moderate watering. After it, the ground must be carefully loosened, but you can do without this if you mulch the soil with sawdust or small straw, another mulch with a layer of 7-10 cm, then the soil will not crack from drying out, and the roots of the peppers will not burst, which will prevent the appearance of apical rot …

How to feed the peppers so that real giants grow? It turns out that one should not spare ammonium nitrate and rotted manure: 1 tbsp. a spoonful of fertilizer in 10 liters of water, and the peppers will grow especially large. And so that nitrates do not accumulate, add superphosphate with potassium sulfate for planting pepper - 20-30 g per running meter of row spacing. Do not apply fresh manure under the pepper - the fruits will rot!

A couple of times over the summer, to prevent disease, peppers must be treated with preparations containing copper, for example, a solution of copper sulfate (5%).

The top of the plant should be pinched so that the peppers sang faster.

The branches that bear fruit must be removed immediately so that the plant does not expend energy on them, but gives nutrients to new fruits.

But the most important thing for the growth of peppers is sun and warmth. In the south, there is no problem with this, but in the more northern regions, the beds for peppers must be broken in a calm from the winds, in the sunniest place. If this is not the case, then it is useful to plant peppers in a specially arranged warm bed - filled with manure and grass. Or in good greenhouses. Then the harvest ripens two weeks earlier.

Valery Brizhan, experienced gardener

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