PEPPER
- Capsicum annuum
- Solanaceae
Pepper is very popular in Ukraine and other CIS countries. There is no party without famous lecso, stuffed or pickled peppers. And of course pepper is one of the main ingredient of vegetable salads and it is tasty as a fresh one. It can be grown in green-houses or outdoors. There are sweet (bell pepper) and chilly pepper (hot). It is impossible to grow them side by side as they will intercross and as a result you will get sweet pepper by the look but chilly pepper by the taste.
A little information from botany: pepper - is half-shrub annual plant ( but in tropic countries it is perennial plant).
- Root system is stalky but after transplanting it becomes look as roots in clusters. It is usually situated in the depth of 30-40 cm in tilth top soil, with supportive environment it can be in depth of 60-70 cm.
- Stalkis in a height of 20-150 cm in the beginning of vegetational period is caulis and in the period of fruit forming it becomes lignescent. Strong brunching stalk with dichotomization when main and side shoots divide in 2 same shoots that stop to grow.
- Single leaves are simple, smooth with long egg-shaped or lanceolate petiole that pointed at the top, they have light-green or dark-green colour.
- Single, double or bunched pentamerous flower but sometimes heptamerous flowers; flower crown is white, yellow, violet or white with violet spots.
- Fruit - is false seeder that called seed-pot and has 2-4 chambers. Nodding fruits have different shape, size and weight. They can be longish, egg-shaped, conical and cylindrical-shaped, flat-round and round-shaped. The colour of ripened fruit is red, orange-red, yellow, in technical maturity they are light or dark-green, white, yellow, violet-green. The weight is from 0,5 to 200 g. Fruit consists of membrane and walls in thickness of 0,1 -0,8 cm, placenta and seeds. They have the next correspondence membrane 62-89 %, placenta 4-27%, bitter pepper has membrane 60-84 %, placenta 5-9 % and seeds 9-33%.
- Pepper seeds are fat, arched, pale-yellow and 1000 seeds weight from 3 to 9 g, they keep viability for 3 years and with disadvantaged environment 1-2 years.