Last edited on 8 Oct 2019. View history
Italian Sweet Pepper
A variety of chili pepper
How to sow Italian sweet pepper: Direct seed indoors, transplant seedlings outside after hardening off
Sun requirement for Italian sweet pepper: Plant in Full Sun
The Italian Sweet Pepper (also known as Friggitello, Golden Greek Sweet Pepper, and Tuscan Pepper) is a Capiscum Annum cultivar that produces tapered green to red peppers. The peppers are mild with slight heat (they have a Scoville Heat rating of 0-500 units) and a touch of bitterness. Greek varieties are sweeter than Italian. Friggitello is sometimes known as Pepperoncini in America, but the Pepperoncini is a separate cultivar and a spicier pepper, with a Scoville rating of 15,000–30,000 units. The plants produce heavily and benefit from being staked. Peppers are harvested while still immature and green, when they are 5–7.5 cm long. They are eaten fresh, sautéed, pickled, and stuffed.
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Italian sweet pepper facts
Lifespan
Height × spread
90cm × 90cmRow Spacing
45cmWhat are growing degree days?
A plant grows with warmth, not with days. A growing degree day is one day's worth of useful warmth: how many degrees the day's average temperature is above the lowest temperature the crop grows at. Add them up from planting and you know how far along the crop is, whatever the calendar says.
Say that lowest temperature is 10°C. A day averaging 17°C gives 7 growing degree days. A day averaging 8°C gives none, as it is too cold for the crop to grow. That is why the same lettuce takes about 50 days in a summer and 90 in an autumn: it needs the same total warmth either way.
For Italian sweet pepper, the FAO EcoCrop database gives a lowest growing temperature of 8°C and a shortest growing cycle of 60 days at its best temperature, about 930 growing degree days to a first harvest.
Where you've told us where your garden is, we use this and the weather there to predict when your Italian sweet pepper will be ready to harvest. We don't use it for how long a plant lives or when it finishes: we go by what members have logged for that.
Growing Italian sweet peppers
- Sow seeds indoors somewhere warm 10 weeks before planting out
- Pot on the seedlings 6 weeks before planting out
- Harden off the seedlings 1 week before planting out
- Set or refill beer traps for slugs and snails at planting out every week
- Stake the plants 2 weeks after planting out
- Water regularly at planting out every week
- Check for aphids 2 weeks after planting out every 2 weeks
- Feed with tomato fertiliser 6 weeks after planting out every 2 weeks
- Pick chillies regularly at first harvest every week
- Bring pots in before the first frost 3 months after first harvest
How members grow Italian sweet peppers
Sunniness
Planted from
Plant Italian sweet peppers with
carrot
ginger
Video
Where Italian sweet peppers grow
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What people are saying about Italian sweet peppers
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Who's planted Italian sweet peppers
- lauravalentine vegetable bed
- Tess Garden
- echovictorecho Garden · Chicago
- juliet Back garden · London, UK
lauravalentine
Italian sweet pepper harvests
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Ecological requirements
Data from the FAO EcoCrop database for Capsicum annuum L.
| Family / Taxonomy | Magnoliopsida Asteridae Solanales Solanaceae |
|---|---|
| Optimal temperature | 17 - 30 °C |
| Absolute temperature | 8 - 35 °C |
| Optimal rainfall | 600 - 1250 mm/year |
| Absolute rainfall | 500 - 1700 mm/year |
| Optimal soil pH | 5.5 - 6.8 |
| Absolute soil pH | 4.5 - 7.0 |
| Crop cycle | 60 - 180 days |
| Max altitude | 3000 m |
| Life form | herb |
| Life span | annual |
| Habit | erect |
| Optimal soil depth | medium (50-150 cm) |
| Optimal soil texture | medium, organic |
| Optimal soil fertility | moderate |
| Optimal soil drainage | well (dry spells) |
| Optimal soil salinity | low (<4 dS/m) |
| Photoperiod | short day (<12 hours), neutral day (12-14 hours) |
| Optimal light | very bright |
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