What is going on with these peppers?

HI all. I have 5 Burpee organic California Wonder bell pepper plants that i started from seed this year. They are really starting to produce now. The problem? These peppers sure dont look like bell peppers. They dont even smell like bell peppers. They actually smell like hot peppers. I do have a couple of cayenne and jalapeno plants, but they are on the other side of the yard. Can anyone help me to identify what type of peppers these appear to be, and what the weird spots are on them? It seems kind of like some kind of rot. The spots are mostly soft, and only appeared on the earliest starting fruits. The new ones coming in are nice and clean, whatever they are. Thanks for any help!

another Pic.

California Wonder are open pollinated. So whoever saved the seed screwed up!
The spots on the peppers is sunscald. That's why the new ones look OK.
The peppers look like Anaheim peppers to me. It is a mildly hot type.
Bernie

Nope - Not Cal Wonders. CWs are round and blocky looking, maybe baseball size, not pointed ends like yours. You've got a seed mixup somewhere. They look similar to my sweet bananas or one of the many hotter varieties, maybe jalapenos, hard to tell without tasting. Your blotching problem is likely related to uneven watering, especially if the plant is containerized. Often later fruits will grow out better than the first ones. Pick off the ones already damaged (they will never get better only worse), and new ones will grow to replace them.

Al

Thanks very much Al and Bernie for you input. I do happen to be growing these peppers in containers, so it could ne either sunscald or uneven watering. Like I said, all of the new ones growing in are coming in clean. As for the type, i am pretty sure they're not jalapenos, because I have 2 jalapeno plants, and these are much bigger. For reference, the largest peppers in my pics above are about 5-6 inches long. I haven't eaten any yet, but when i do i'll post whether they are hot or mild.

What did you mean by open pollinated? DOes that mean they will mix with whatever pollinates them? Could my cayennes or jalapenos have pollinated these and made them grow bizzarro hybrids?

On the ones that are damaged, is it OK to eat the rest of the pepper, or should I discard the entire thing? A few others that I didnt show in the pics are quite large and have only very small bad spots on them. I would hate to throw them away.

Thanks again!

You can eat the undamaged part.
Open pollinated means they just collect seeds from the parent plants. Most peppers raised now are hybrids. They are raised so they can get crossed with anything else.
Peppers will cross in your garden, but it won't effect the shape, only the taste, hot or mild.

I've never had much problem with peppers cross-pollinating, and I've grown several. Then again, I don't save the seeds for next years crop either. It just seems easier and cheaper for me to buy new seeds from a certified source each year.

Some people are really into seed saving, and that's fine also. In that case you must use open-pollinated varieties and keep your "savers" segregated away from all other varieties. The quality of the seed is often can be a reflection of the person saving it.

Hybrids should never be used as seed savers because they are cross-pollinated first generation plants to begin with. If the seed is kept and used next year, the results will likely be off from the original description. They tend to revert back to the parent lines.

In the long run, the best seeds are really inexpensive when compared to the time and labor I put in. That's why I buy them from a reliable source.

Al

We like Thai Hot peppers. One year we couldn't get seed for them. We had some dried ones, so we used the seed from one of them. We had 30 plants & everyone was different. All from the same fruit!
People loved them & asked for them the next year. Of course no way to duplicate them.

5 to 6" narrows it down to about a couple hundred varieties ha. Random guess would be Anaheim (common green chili) but there's lots of peppers that look similar. The good news (unless you like really hot stuff) is that the hottest pepper I know of that fits the appearance of yours is Numex Barker's Hot, and while hot for "green chili" they aren't very hot compared to other peppers. (even Jalapenos are usually considerably hotter than Barkers)



This message was edited Aug 23, 2010 3:27 PM

Here's an old pic of some peppers I grew... the large green one is R Naky and the similar red one next to it is an Espanola Improved. They both look similar to yours but with so many similar varieties you'll probably never know what you have. Just eat them and enjoy them is my advice, and look for a better seed source next year.

I'll second that idea Dorkasaurus, just eat them and enjoy! A few years ago I found a wonderful cross somewhere between a yellow zuchini and a smallish pumpkin growing in my compost pile. The plentiful fruits were delicous, so we ate several of them. But never again will we ever see them, or even know what they were. Such is life!

Al

In a quirky kind 'a way, that's what making gardening so much fun...

I go along with the person who suggested anahiem peppers. I raised some this year and they look like yours. Mine were also suseptible to sun scald.

Thanks to everyone who contributed. So it does seem like I may never know exactly what type they are, but I do know that they are delicious. They aren't hot at all, with a taste similar to a bell pepper, and a much thinner flesh. I am not sure if there is a mild Anaheim, but if so then maybe that's it. A couple of those turned red while they were on the counter so I cut them all up and added them to a recipe I have for smothered pork chops. They made the sauce extremely sweet, so the red must have been very sweet. I have about 40 or 50 more growing on the 5 plants, so i should have plenty to enjoy. I am thinking I should save some of the seeds and plant them next year just to see what I get.

I think this is the last time I buy seeds at Lowes. I was wrong, it wasn't Burpee whose seed i bought but it was Ferry-Morse, but I am going to do some research on seed companies and buy from another outfit for next years garden. I think it might be worth the extra couple of bucks to get seeds that will be what they say they are. I must say that i have enjoyed my first year of gardening very much, but I am quite disappointed that i didn't get any Bell peppers. Bell's were the reason I tried this in the first place. There's always next year!

Look at Johnny's Seed. Never had any of theirs that were not true. Most is also organic.
http://www.johnnyseeds.com/default.aspx

Joey I've been gardening for a few decades now and I got shipped the wrong pepper seeds only once. I think at that time I was ordering from Park's. It happens, but as you see very, very infrequently. At that time I used to grow little sweet peppers for pickling. The hot ones looked a little different so my DH thought he'd try a bite while I was prepping the peppers. Ooooh weeee, I've never seen an expression like that on his face before or after. After a long while he recovered and we decided to pull those plants up. Isn't gardening interesting, always full of surprises.

I ordered yellow mini bells & red mini bells from who I don't remember. The ones that were supposed to be red were yellow & the yellow were weird. Some as big as bell peppers but strange colors. That company will now be on my not to order list. When you are running a market garden, there is no room on the plan for screw-ups.