An abundance of pepper varieties are available to home gardeners. Most plants grow to 2 to 3 feet (0.6 to 1 m) tall. Variety descriptions for sweet peppers frequently use words such as “lobes” and “blocky.” When you cut a pepper crosswise near the stem, you’ll notice that the walls divide the pepper fruit into sections. Pepper experts call these sections cells or lobes. Well-defined lobes or cells make peppers blocky. Most bell peppers have 3 to 4 lobes. Blocky fruits are best for stuffing or slicing into pepper rings.

The following list considers various sweet peppers for your garden:

• Sweet bell peppers: Bell pepper fruits come in blocky, round, or elongated shapes. Most fruits start out green but mature through a variety of colors before ripening to their final color. The days to maturity given in the following descriptions represent the time from transplant in the garden to full size. Add two weeks to this number to know when they’ll mature to their final color. Sweet bells have the sweetest flavor when harvested at the mature color stage. The thick-walled varieties are best for stuffed-pepper recipes. Consider these:
  • ‘Arianne’: These blocky, Dutch-bred peppers mature early (in 68 days) to a deep orange color.
  • ‘California Wonder’: These classic, thick-walled, great-for-stuffing, 4-inch x 4-inch (10-cm x 10-cm) blocky bells mature to red in 75 days.
  • ‘Chocolate Beauty’ hybrid: These 3- to 4-lobe bells mature in 70 days to a rich chocolate color.
  • ‘Lilac Bell’ hybrid: These 3- to 4-lobe bells have beautiful lilac-purple skin with ivory-white flesh. Harvest the fruits at the lilac stage or allow them to mature to red. They mature in 70 days.
• Sweet nonbell peppers: Sweet peppers are more than big, blocky bells. Great sweet peppers also come in round, cherry shapes and short, fat heart shapes. Most of these pepper plants mature to the color red, which is when they’re the sweetest:
  • ‘Biscayne’ hybrid: These 6-inch-long (15 cm), 2-inch-wide (5 cm), Cubanelle-type (feature a blunt end) fruits mature in 65 days.
  • ‘Large Red Cherry’: Thick-walled, 1-inch-round (2 cm) sweet peppers grow on very productive, compact plants - 11/2 feet (46 cm) tall. They mature in 80 days.
  • ‘Paprika Supreme’ hybrid: Flattened, 7-inch-long (18 cm), thin-walled fruits are perfect for drying and making paprika after they mature, which takes 100 days.
  • ‘Sweet Banana’: Tapered, 6-inch-long fruits are born on compact 11/2-foot-tall (46 cm) plants and mature from yellow to red in 72 days.