Three New Peppers

‘Melrose’ is Chicago’s favorite heirloom cooking Pepper

Hot Peppers have been getting most of the hype in recent years but today we’d like to talk about our new sweet varieties. We’re stepping outside the Bell box a bit to expand the flavor palette without turning up the heat. Each of these Peppers brings its own unique character from the garden to the kitchen: Central American ‘Costa Rican Sweet’, Chicago’s famous heirloom ‘Melrose’, and the popular mini Lunchbox Mix.

 
Container Peppers for edible deck gardens—a growing category

Peppers are some of the easiest vegetables to grow in patio pots. There’s no need to look for special dwarf Peppers, although some of the more compact varieties work better in the tighter space of a container. As with Tomatoes, breeders have been working toward developing Pepper cultivars that handle restricted root growth better.

Two of the new Peppers we discussed today, ‘Costa Rican Sweet’ and Lunchbox Sweet Mix, work quite well in patio pots, as does another of our sweet Peppers, ‘Baby Belle’. They look ornamental, with small, nicely shaped fruits in bright colors, and they produce an abundance of Peppers for snacking right there on the patio. Of course, many hot Peppers work in pots, too, and look terrific—but you might not want to pluck one off the vine and pop it straight into your mouth. Or maybe you would…

Many edibles are ornamental and vice versa—Peppers blur the line

Two sides of the same coin with white dots on a bed of green

When pairing plants, consider the blending of Hypoestes and Lobularia. Both echo the same design theme like two sides of the same coin: little white dots on a bed of green. Hypoestes uses speckles of white on wide green leaves, whereas Lobularia uses dense clusters of small white flowers on a bed of slender green leaves. 

Culturally, the two plants play well together. They both spread out to cover the soil, but neither one so densely as to crowd out the other. Planted side-by-side, their edges will interlock like fingers. You can also interplant them in a checkboard or diamond pattern using a 1:2 ratio. Planting twice as much of one than the other lays down a beautifully textured tablecloth to color the garden bed.

You can stop there or you can set the table with a centerpiece. Here the key is to work with the neutral greens and whites the two plants share. We find this is a versatile color combination for surrounding tall and dramatic focal points like Pennisetum ‘Vertigo’ and Musa ‘Red Dwarf’, or to place among a loose stand of Ruella ‘Purple Rain’.