Sweet pepper: useful properties, cultivation and species

We love pepper not only for its excellent taste, but also for the simplicity of cooking. If unexpected guests unexpectedly come to you, you can always quickly "tune" a salad of pepper and other vegetables, put it on a slice of bread, thus creating a sandwich, etc. This vegetable was repeatedly captured in famous still lifes. Let's learn more about it.

Sweet pepper is in fact a perennial herb, but in our harsh weather conditions it is re-grown every year, before planting the seedlings of the house in a warm place. This is done at the end of winter.

Pepper comes from Mexico, to Europe it was brought back in the fifteenth century. We note that sweet pepper varieties are significantly "younger" and are known for only about two hundred years, and they have become especially popular only in the last couple of decades.

Sweet pepper (still called Bulgarian) is one of the many most useful vegetable crops. Among the remaining vegetables, he leads the content of vitamin C. By content of vitamin A, pepper is equated with carrots. And it also contains rutin, B vitamins, sugars, essential oils and mineral salts. For preservation of vitamins, pepper is better to eat raw, using it simply or adding it to salads. With heat treatment, most of the vitamins are lost. Pepper sweet can also be used for medicinal purposes, known long ago. Its fruits have hematopoietic, vitamin action, it can be used as a prevention of sclerosis and to lower the level of cholesterol in the body. With hair loss, nail and skin diseases and hypotension, expressed in weakness and dizziness, it is also useful to eat sweet peppers on a regular basis. To improve your health and bring the body in order it is enough to consume one or two sweet peppers a day.

It is worth paying attention to the fact that pepper is categorically contraindicated in case of stomach ulcer or duodenal ulcer, kidney, liver and intestine diseases!

How to grow pepper? Firstly, it is necessary to remember that pepper is a thermophilic and photophilous plant. It reacts badly to sudden changes in day and night temperatures and high humidity, and therefore regularly ventilate the greenhouse without creating a draft. If it is dark in the greenhouse, its leaves will turn yellow, the ovaries will start to fall off and the plant will gradually wither away.

Light loamy or sandy loam soils rich in organic compounds are suitable for growing. First, they sow seedlings, preferably in plastic pots, placed at home on the window. The optimum growth temperature is 25-30 degrees. Seedlings will appear in a week or two. The first time to water the seedlings you need five days after emergence. The average period of growth of seedlings is 50 days. In the ground sweet pepper is planted in the spring or early in the summer, when there will definitely be no frost.

Two days after planting the seedlings in the ground, it is necessary to water the future peppers. Simultaneously, plants need to feed up with ammonium nitrate (1 kilogram per 100 square meters). When the plants reach 50 centimeters high, set the pins and pull the string or wire to prevent falling and breaking plants.

Among all varieties I want to mention sweet pepper "Bogatyr". The fruits are excellent - smooth, beautiful externally, massive, have a great taste. When transported over long distances, it does not deteriorate. Resistant to viral diseases, productivity is excellent! Gathering the harvest of this variety, you will be pleasantly surprised - all the fruits will be "as for selection" - large, shiny, smooth, in general, as a toy! Also nice and attractive-looking peppers sweet "California miracle", which is fruitful and stably fruitful. Perfect for stuffing and cooking salads, its fruits are fleshy and thick-walled.