Plant Care Library

Group/Class:  Sweet Tapered

Description:

A wonderful mounded variety that features long Marconi style peppers; 13" long, thick walled sweet and crunchy peppers emerge green and mature to deep red; delicious eaten fresh, stuffed, fried or grilled

Edible Qualities

Thunderbolt Sweet Pepper is an annual vegetable plant that is commonly grown for its edible qualities. It produces large green long peppers (which are technically 'berries') with red flesh which are typically harvested when mature. The fruit will often fade to crimson over time. The peppers have a sweet taste and a crunchy texture.

The peppers are most often used in the following ways:

• Fresh Eating
• Eating When Cooked/Prepared
• Cooking
• Baking
• Freezing

Planting & Growing

Thunderbolt Sweet Pepper will grow to be about 4 feet tall at maturity, with a spread of 3 feet. When planted in rows, individual plants should be spaced approximately 3 feet apart. This vegetable plant is an annual, which means that it will grow for one season in your garden and then die after producing a crop.

This plant is typically grown in a designated vegetable garden. It should only be grown in full sunlight. It does best in average to evenly moist conditions, but will not tolerate standing water. It is not particular as to soil pH, but grows best in rich soils. It is somewhat tolerant of urban pollution. Consider applying a thick mulch around the root zone over the growing season to conserve soil moisture. This is a selected variety of a species not originally from North America.

Thunderbolt Sweet Pepper is a good choice for the vegetable garden, but it is also well-suited for use in outdoor pots and containers. Because of its height, it is often used as a 'thriller' in the 'spiller-thriller-filler' container combination; plant it near the center of the pot, surrounded by smaller plants and those that spill over the edges. It is even sizeable enough that it can be grown alone in a suitable container. Note that when growing plants in outdoor containers and baskets, they may require more frequent waterings than they would in the yard or garden.