Sweet pepper or paprika

Family - Solanaceae. Homeland - Central and South America. Sweet pepper - a small perennial( in culture - one-year) heat-loving plant, reaches 40 - 60 cm height. In the room conditions, when he creates the appropriate conditions, he blossoms and fructifies.

The leaf is simple, entire, the length of the leaf blade is 10-15 cm. The flowers are yellowish-white, bisexual, usually open in the first half of the day. Flowers are polluted both by their own and by other people's pollen. You can not grow a sweet and bitter pepper next to it, as there is a re-dusting and sweet peppers become bitter. Fruit of pepper is a false berry of the most diverse colors of white, yellow, dark green, violet and bright red. The plant blooms throughout its life, so the plant can often see flowers and fruits. When ripening fruits, pepper is an excellent decoration of the premises.

For the room culture, balconies, loggias we recommend the following grades: Swallow, Maikop 470, Winnie the Pooh, Mysterious Island, Pervenets of Siberia, Treasure Island, and in the south of the country - Victoria, Moldova Gift and others.

♦ Accommodation. Peppers are placed in bright rooms with direct sunlight. The optimum temperature of air at its content is + 20 - + 2b ° С in the daytime and +18 - + 20 ° С at night. With reduced illumination( cloudiness), the air temperature should be somewhat reduced.

On the glazed balconies and loggias growing peppers can be transferred already in the middle of May.

You can get pepper fruits depending on the time of planting and varieties from April to December.

♦ Care. In indoor culture, it is best to use a seedling method to grow peppers. To obtain ready seedlings from seeds, it takes 40-50 days in summer and 50-60 days in winter. Seeds of pepper are pre-etched in 1% manganese-acid kalium, for 20 minutes. Then they are washed in running water and sown in sowing boxes. After 20 days, after emergence, from the boxes choose stronger plants and dive into pots. As a substrate, high-nutrient "Biogrunt", sold in shops, or make a soil mixture from humus, turf, peat and river sand in a ratio of 5: 2: 2.1 is used.

When picking plants, the root pepper root is plucked and the root system fits completely in a small pot( 15x15 cm) or box. It is recommended to plant peppers in pots in the middle of February, and take them out to unheated terraces, balconies and loggias - in the first or second decade of May.

During hot time watering is abundant, but not more often than once in 2 - 3 days.

We recommend that the soil in pots or crates be loosened regularly. Peppers are fed every 10 days, for which it is best to use a universal granulated dressing "Flower" or liquid concentrate fertilizer "Rainbow".

When flowering, the plant is periodically shaken for better pollination.

Once every 10 - 15 days, patients and ugly fruits and yellow leaves should be removed.

Pepper plants in boxes or pots are tied to a specially stretched trellis made of a thick cord or wire. Fruits are harvested as they mature.

♦ Pests and diseases - aphids, spider mites, whitefly and powdery mildew. With an excess of water in the soil, there is a blackish leg and a brown leaf spot.

♦ Reproduction - by seeds.

Use

Pepper stewed with Lecho cheese

8 pieces of green pepper cut into strips, put out in fat with onions until soft, then add slices of 8 firm tomatoes, black pepper, salt and simmer until tomatoes are ready. After that, drive 4 eggs and stew until the eggs thicken, stirring constantly. Pepper is served with bread or unsweetened semolina porridge.

Pepper, cooked quickly "minute"

8 pieces of pepper cut into thin strips, sprinkle with ground cumin and salt, put in a sauté pan with heated fat and stew, closing the lid, a few minutes without pouring water. Pepper will become soft, but will not lose its green color. To the pepper prepared in this way, we recommend serving white bread and potatoes. Delicious!

Salad of pepper, cucumber and tomatoes

4 pieces of pepper, 1 cucumber, 4 pieces of tomatoes, 1 onion, salt, 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil, sugar, vinegar.

Pepper the seeds and finely chop. Cucumber and tomatoes cut into slices, add finely chopped onion, sugar, salt, vegetable oil. Stir thoroughly and leave for a while.

Paprikash

Pepper, wash, remove seeds, wash again and cut into pieces. Blanch for 3-4 minutes in boiling water and immediately cool in a cold. Smaller tomatoes to wash and layers together with pepper to lay in banks. Chop the parsley and put it on the bottom. Pour boiling tomato juice with salt and sterilize in boiling water( liter cans -50-60 min.).

The main advantage of sweet pepper is the availability of a large number of vitamins in fruits.

So, in the content of vitamin C, it exceeds all vegetable plants.

Fruits of pepper are rich in vitamin R.

There are many carotene, thiamine( vitamin B) and others in them. In order for a person to satisfy the daily requirement for vitamins C and P, it is enough to eat only 20-50 g of sweet pepper( 1 fruit).