Bell Pepper – Capsicum

🌿Plant Care Guide

📝 Description

Chilli is mainly used in culinary purpose for adding flavour, colour, and pungency. Dry chilli, powdered or ground into a paste and even green chillies are used for curries, sambars, rasam and other savory dishes to impart pungency, colour and flavour to food items. It is widely used in the manufacture of curry powder, curry paste and all kinds of pickles and preparing sauce, soups, salads etc. Chilli can be grown in wide range of soils but well drained loam soil rich in organic matter is best suited for chilli cultivars. As a rainfed crop chilli can be grown successfully in medium to heavy textured soils like clay loams provided proper drainage to prevent water stagnation. Chilli crop will not withstand waterlogged conditions for more than a day. A good crop of chilli can be raised on red sandy and sandy loam soils, as an irrigated crop, with copious amount of organic manuring and fertilizer application is necessary to get optimum growth of the plant. Though chilli is grown on soils with as ph range of < 5.0 Like the acid laterite soils of coastal areas and heavy rainfall (mountain) regions to soils of > 8.0 Ph like the alluvial soils of north india and black cotton soils of the deccan plateau, it performs best at a soil ph of about 6.5. Saline and sodic soils hinder crop growth and fruit development.Bell pepper or Capsicum performs well in warm humid tropical and subtropical regions. It is being cultivated from sea level to almost 1000 m above msl.Optimum temperature range of 15-35 °C is requires for chilli cultivation. Comparatively milder climate conditions are preferred for sweet or Bell pepper or Capsicum. A soil temperature of 10 °C or less retards crop growth. Prevalence of low temperature during fruit ripening is likely to delay colour development of fruits.