The 5 Best Sweet Peppers to Grow for High Yield and Great Flavor

Big and small, sweet and crunchy, here are five easy-to-grow pepper varieties with outstanding productivity and taste

My top 5 picks for sweet peppers this year

This year I grew about a dozen different types of sweet peppers to see which offered the best combination of easy growing, high yield, and great flavor. Here are the five varieties that really stood out:

California Wonder Bell Pepper

California Wonder Bell Peppers

A lot of people yawn at this one because it’s so common. But I think it’s common because it’s so easy to grow. The fruits are large and blocky – often 4 inches or more across – with thick walls that don’t get sunburn as easily as some other varieties. A typical plant will yield four to five fruits, more if you live in an area with a longer growing season like I do (USDA Zone 9).

As flavor goes, it’s milder and not as sweet as other peppers, but it stores well and will keep its crunch for up to a week after picking (even un-refrigerated). California Wonder is my wife’s go-to pepper for her signature chicken stuffed bell peppers because it doesn’t get mushy when stuffed and cooked.

Bonus: California Wonder is an open pollinated variety, so you can save the seeds and they’ll grow reliably year in and out. Personally, I haven’t bought seeds for this variety in years.

Buran Sweet Pepper

Buran Polish heirloom sweet peppers

Buran is a Polish heirloom sweet pepper that’s slower to fruit than other peppers, but super productive. The fruit is anywhere from 3-6 inches in size, starting out green and quickly turning a shiny red.

I grew them for the first time last year and ended up harvesting 8 to 10 fruit per plant over the season, which lasted well into late September and early October.

Aside from the high productivity, what I really like about Buran is the flavor is quite sweet even when the fruit is still green. We eat a lot of these fresh in salads as well as canning them for use in soups and stews in the winter.

On the downside, the plants are so productive that they need a lot of support. Also, the fruit is susceptible to sun scald, so they need to be shaded in the summer sun (plain old burlap is great for this).

As an heirloom, you can also save the seeds from this one and it’ll reliably produce year after year.

Green Lamuyo Pepper

Green Lamuyo sweet peppers

Lamuyo peppers are similar to bell peppers but longer and narrower. The colorful red and yellow ones are more popular than the green these days, but they all taste pretty much the same.

Each plant produces 4-6 fruits, each about 3-4 inches long and about 3 inches wide. They are sweeter and stronger flavored than their bell-shaped cousins, but the skins are also a bit thinner, so they don’t keep as long as the California Wonder does.

The plants are 12 to 18 inches tall, fairly narrow, and don’t mind being grown a little more densely than other varieties. Like the Burans, they need support to keep them upright and the fruit off the ground.

If you’re looking for good sweet pepper taste but don’t have a lot of room, these are a good choice for container gardening or small raised beds (I grew these in our keyhole garden).

Italian Frying Peppers

Italian frying peppers in green and yellow

Italian frying peppers are elongated peppers, either cubanelle (square bottomed) or corno (pointy bottomed, shaped like animal horns). Depending on the variety, the color ranges from green to red, but the flavor remains sweet and a touch spicy regardless of color.

The type I grew (just labeled “Italian frying pepper”) had fruit ranging from a lime green to a lemon yellow, so we started calling them “lemon-lime” peppers even though the flavor is actually quite sweet and nothing like citrus. The plants are upright and 12 to 18 inches tall, producing 4-6 fruit, each 6-8 inches long, round, and about an inch and a half wide.

The skin of these peppers is thin and caramelizes easily when fried or roasted, making them quite tasty both by themselves and in sauces and Italian dishes. I found them to be excellent roasting peppers, searing the skin on the grill and serving alongside grilled steak and onions. I also preserved a bunch of the roasted peppers and plan on using them in chilis and stews in the colder months.

As peppers go, I found these to be the most flavorful for cooking, but not as much for fresh eating. They also have a fairly short shelf life after being picked, starting to dry out and wrinkle after just a few days. Plan on using them shortly after you pick them.

Snack Mix Peppers

Mini snack peppers

I don’t actually know what the real name of these peppers is. I’ve seen them called “lunchbox”, “yum yum mini”, and “mini mix”, so maybe they don’t have an official name. I just call them “snack peppers” because we snack on them a lot.

My seed source was from one of those bags of mini sweet peppers you can get at the grocery store (hooray grocery store gardening!).

The plants are compact, just 12 inches tall and equally wide, and absolutely loaded with 2-3-inch fruit. As of writing this in late August, I’ve harvested almost 60 peppers from just four plants, and they’re still flowering, so I expect quite a bit more as the season goes on. Better yet, even loaded with fruit, the plants stay upright and don’t need much support (if at all)

While the peppers are small, the skin is fairly thick and they stay fresh and crunchy for a long time after picking. The flavor is sweet and doesn’t have that pepper “tang” that other varieties do, making them great for fresh snacking as well as in cooking, and pickling by themselves and in giardinera mixes.

These little guys are great for growing in containers and, unlike some of the other peppers, do pretty well in partial shade. If there’s one downside, they seem to be super attractive to aphids, so I have to hit them with a little soap/oil spray to keep the pests down.

Other than that, however, they’re a great pepper whether you’re eating them fresh or cooking with them. Just be ready to be overloaded with them, because they are super productive.

My Top Pepper Pick

Best flavor: Italian Frying Pepper. When it comes down to great flavor, my top pick is the Italian Frying Pepper. Roasted (or fired), they are fantastic by themselves or used as an ingredient in a dish.

Best productivity and versatility: Snack Mix. For all around flavor, productivity and versatility, I have to go with the Snack Mix peppers. You really can’t beat the number of peppers you get from a single plant. And, they’re small enough you can munch them whole, but they keep their crunch and sweet flavor when cooked.