Red Marconi Pepper

This is hands down one of my favorite peppers for frying and for salads. The peppers are as sweet or sweeter than bell peppers when green and are much sweeter when fully ripe. I mix fully ripe red & yellow Marconi peppers in my dehydrator to be ground into the most amazing sweet paprika you can imagine. If I want hot paprika I will dehydrate some hot peppers to add to it. Mixing Marconi peppers with Aji Dulce peppers in salsa is another phenomenal way to use them. I use a deep mulch (Ruth Stout method) in my garden and I never have any disease or pest issues with my plants. It helps these plants to keep producing consistently sized peppers until frost kills them. The deep mulch also keeps the plants from needing irrigation even during a 2 1/2 month drought.

These peppers are so sweet and delicious! Forget growing and other sweet reds, there isn't any need,better then bells. I find when I grow more, planted closer together I get a better yeild. After harvesting place in plastic produce bag in fridge to keep away from air and they will last much longer. They r hard 2 germinate just like most peppers. I read in a study that there is less success w/germination when using Peet ,it's a PH thing..so use a potting soil. Also needs heat to germinte, I put it on the laptop as I was playing on computer but I'm sure a heating mat would be optimal. I had some blosso end rot this year bc it was hot with little to no rain so there was uneven watering which messes up calcium uptake, therefore bloom end rot, just like ur Tom's and zukes. An old guy friend gave us some of his homegrown sweet ital.reds this yr (he gets the seeds from his family in italy)..they were thin walled and very little flavor, next yr I will give him some seedlings I germinte, lol.

This is the first year growing these. The peppers in my containers did better than the ones in the raised bed. I only got 2-3 per plant and expected more. It's early September and they still aren't ripe. On the fence if I'll try these next year.

We had an incredibly soggy June and it didn't seem to phase these at all while some of my other varieties seemed to slow down during the month. The large plants were absolutely smothered with peppers starting to turn red by early August. Very sweet flavor and not too tough of skin so that it goes well raw in salads, fried with sausage, or dotted on a pizza. Definitely would recommend. Grown in raised beds. Organic compost, seaweed emulsion, and fish emulsion used as feed. No pests observed.

I was so excited for these peppers, but none germinated (2013). Was only my second year starting from seed, so possibly was user error. Haven't tried again yet.