How to distinguish seedlings of bitter pepper from sweet?

When choosing seedlings for growing on a home plot, gardeners can accidentally confuse different types of pepper. To prevent this from happening, you need to understand how some plants differ from others.

If the seedlings were not previously marked before planting, it will be difficult to distinguish one young plant from another. You need to focus on the following points.

• Leg thickness. Hot pepper has a thinner and elongated stem. Over time, it begins to bend under the weight of the fruit and changes shape slightly. Sweet pepper has a strong and short stem. But if the seedlings are strong and healthy, the stems of the plants are really similar to each other.
• Plant color. Seedlings of bitter pepper have a darker color. Therefore, it is easy to notice against the background of lighter seedlings of Bulgarian varieties.
• Foliage. You can also focus on the shape of the leaves. In hot pepper, they are long and elongated. Their surface is rough and hard. The foliage of sweet pepper is pleasant to the touch and quite wide. Its edges are slightly rounded.

It will be possible to determine the variety by external signs only if the seeds were planted in the soil at about the same time. Otherwise, some plants will appear stronger and taller simply because of their age.

Sweet and hot peppers must be kept away from each other. The beds should be at a distance of about 20 meters. This is necessary so that the plants do not pollinate. If this happens, the sweet pepper will take on a slight bitterness. This is not liked by many gardeners.

Hot pepper differs from Bulgarian and to taste. In the first, the fruits are bitter and burning, in the second – sweet and rather juicy. The same can be said about seedlings. To understand which plant is in the pot, you can try to slightly bite its foliage and chew it well. In hot pepper, it has a characteristic bitter taste. As a rule, gardeners pluck the lower leaves for testing. This is done in order not to harm the fragile plant.

If a seed shell remains on young seedlings, you can also taste it. With hot peppers, it will be unpleasant and spicy. Salad pepper grains have a neutral taste, without bitterness.

You can also taste the seeds selected for planting. This should be done after calibration. Initially, the raw materials are laid out on paper. In the process, too large and too small seeds are separated. The remains of the seed are immersed in saline and left for 10 minutes. Those seeds that have gone to the bottom must be carefully washed and dried. After that, you can taste the planting material.

If the previous methods did not help you decide on the choice of pepper, you should pay attention to other important points.

Examining the grown seedlings, it is possible to determine the variety during the flowering of plants. The first buds on hot pepper appear about a month after planting young seedlings in open ground. Sweet peppers start blooming later. This usually happens a few weeks after the buds appear on the hot pepper bushes.

After the end of flowering, the ovary appears on both bitter and sweet peppers. In hot pepper, it has an oblong shape. Future fruits are quite small in size. In the future, they grow in length. Ripe fruits of hot pepper always have an elongated shape. Most often they have a rich red color. The size of these fruits may vary.

The ovary of sweet pepper has a spherical shape. In the future, it slowly increases, turning into a full-fledged fetus. Bell peppers are heavy and thick-walled. They can be red, green, orange or yellow.

It should be noted that this method of verification is completely unreliable. The shape of future fruits largely depends on the characteristics of the plant variety. Therefore, the shape of the ovary can only become an additional argument in favor of the plant belonging to a particular species.

Experienced gardeners know that sweet peppers are more whimsical. Therefore, it is difficult to take care of him. When planting bell peppers on your site, you should pay attention to the following factors.

• Temperature. This culture is very thermophilic. Best of all, young seeds germinate at a temperature of + 25-26 degrees. When it drops to 13-15 degrees, the growth of seedlings stops. If it drops to zero, young plants die altogether. At the same time, seedlings react poorly to heat. In bad conditions, they begin to wither and become very weak.
• Humidity. Demanding seedlings of bell pepper and soil moisture. If the gardener does not water the young seedlings in a timely manner, their growth will stop. Because of this, the bushes will be very small. There will also be very little fruit on them. Pepper seedlings are watered with warm and well-settled water. Irrigate young plants mainly in the evenings. It is not worth over-wetting the soil. This can cause the plant to wither or be affected by one of the fungal diseases.
• Soil quality. So that the roots of the plants receive the right amount of air, the soil after watering should be carefully loosened. After planting bell pepper on the plot, the ground can be additionally mulched. This helps retain moisture in the soil and also protects young plants from weeds.

Hot peppers bear fruit well in any conditions. Such plants are not afraid of sudden changes in temperature or high humidity. Therefore, it is much easier to take care of them. But gardeners should remember that young seedlings do not like direct sunlight. Therefore, it is usually planted next to a fence, tall bushes or some kind of building. With this arrangement, the shade well covers the sprouts sensitive to the sun.

Knowing these features, different varieties of peppers need to be planted separately. If different plants were accidentally planted in one area, it is recommended to remove the seedlings of bitter pepper from there immediately after it has been noticed. You need to dig it out along with the root.

There are several ways to do this.

• Protect the selected area from insects. To do this, you need to build a small greenhouse, covering a wooden or metal frame with gauze. This will not affect the yield of the plant, as well as the taste and quality of the fruit. It is very important to securely fix the supports so that the structure does not accidentally fall from strong gusts of wind.
• Use gauze bandages. This method is usually used if the bushes are scattered over the beds or some other crops grow next to the pepper. In this case, each plant will need to be separated from the others. The first step is to find seedlings of bitter pepper on the site. The area around each flower should be carefully tied with a gauze bandage. This will protect it from bees.
• Treatment of bushes with syrup. To attract the attention of insects to sweet peppers, you can use honey water or any other sweet product. It is poured into a spray bottle. Spraying will help attract beneficial insects to the right plants. Before carrying out this procedure, hot pepper should be wrapped with gauze.

In order not to have to waste time on such procedures, gardeners should not use hand-bought seed material. It is worth buying seeds only from trusted manufacturers. Plant seeds of burning and Bulgarian varieties initially need to be in different boxes. After planting, it is important to mark the plants.

If it is not possible to arrange beds with different types of pepper at a small distance from each other, it is recommended to plant some tall crops between them. It can be tomatoes, eggplant or even corn.

Even a novice gardener can learn to distinguish between seedlings of sweet and bitter peppers. Having noticed such unsuitable neighbors in time, it will be very easy to save your future harvest and get fruits with ideal taste characteristics.