Characteristics and description of the variety
Sweet bell pepper of the Bull's Heart variety is an early ripening hybrid. From germination to fruit ripening it takes only 90-100 days. Equally suitable for outdoor and indoor growing. The bush is compact, up to half a meter high. The fruits are large, weighing up to 200 g. The shape resembles a heart, elongated - conical. Unripe fruits are dark green, and ripe ones are bright red. The surface is slightly ribbed, glossy. The walls are thick, up to 10 mm, juicy, dense. The taste is sweet, the aroma is pronounced. Suitable for salads, winter canning, freezing and short-term storage. The harvest from one bush, subject to all agrotechnical standards, reaches 4-5 kg.
How to properly ripen
It should be noted that the pepper will not ripen as shown in the photo.
When ripened in the open air, the fruits begin to wither.
Advice! For proper ripening, the pepper must be placed in a container lined with newspapers along the bottom and walls.
For each row of green fruits, one ripe vegetable must be placed. Instead of pepper, you can put a ripe tomato (there is a risk that it will start to rot) or a ripe apple. Once filled, the box is closed.
The bottom line is that the ripe fruit releases ethylene, which stimulates unripe peppers to ripen.
Important! You cannot wrap each pepper individually in newspaper. Green peppers and ripe fruit should lie together without unnecessary partitions
In this case, the newspaper will delay the spread of ethylene and the fruits will not ripen. Due to ethylene volatilization, the box cannot be kept open.
To ripen, peppers must have long tails. During the process, the fruit will still draw nutrients from the remaining cutting. You need to check your bookmark every 2-3 days. If the paper is damp, it needs to be replaced. Instead of newspapers, you can use paper napkins.
The box can also be replaced with a plastic bag lined with paper.
While the first batch of peppers is ripening in the box, the second part of the fruits has time to form and fill on the bush, thus increasing the yield.
Ox Heart pepper is a universal variety, suitable for salads, canning, culinary processing and freezing. For salad, the most delicious pepper is freshly picked from the garden, where it has ripened on the bush. For winter preservation, it is suitable when ripened in a box.
The advantages of this variety also include good keeping quality. When stored in a refrigerator or underground with an air temperature of 0-2°C, peppers can last a month longer than tomatoes or eggplants.
A large harvest can be stored in boxes with calcined river sand. Place wrapping paper or newspaper at the bottom of the box and lay the pods, sprinkling it with sand. There is no need to wash before storing, just remove surface dirt.
Inventive summer residents who do not have space to store a large harvest of peppers have found a very interesting way to reduce the volume occupied by the fruits.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Ox Heart
The advantage of the variety is that in the southern regions the crop can be harvested several times per season. The variety has good transportability and a marketable appearance that lasts for a long time. The versatility of the variety. It grows equally well in both southern and northern latitudes.
The disadvantages of the variety are that it is very demanding on soil fertility, watering and heat. Does not tolerate sudden temperature changes. Susceptible to diseases.
Planting and caring for the variety
Sowing seeds for seedlings is carried out in February - March. Before planting, seeds should be disinfected in a weak solution of manganese. The soil for sowing is chosen to be fertile, light, water- and breathable. Sow the seeds in moist soil and cover with a bag or glass to speed up germination. Place in a bright and warm place. Picking is carried out in the phase of 1-2 true leaves. Seedlings are planted 2 months after the seeds germinate.
The soil for planting is prepared in advance. They clear the weeds, apply fertilizer and dig up. Then holes are made according to the 40x60 pattern. A stake is lowered into the hole and the plant is planted in it. In the future, the pepper bush will be tied to this stake.
Frozen pyramid
Cut out the core of ripe large fruits. We don’t throw away the core, it will come in handy. Place each pod, one at a time, in boiling water for 30 seconds.
After cooling, stack the peppers one on top, thus forming a pyramid. There is no need to worry about pushing the pods into each other. Cooked peppers are quite soft and easily inserted inside each other.
Place the finished pyramid in a plastic bag and fill the remaining voids with the core. Such a pyramid takes up little space in the freezer, allowing you to preserve even a large harvest. In winter, thawed peppers will be indistinguishable from fresh ones.
They often touch fresh fruits in salads, since with “Bull’s Heart” it’s difficult to resist just eating fresh fruit right away.
Watering and fertilizing Oxheart pepper
The variety is very demanding when it comes to watering. With a lack of moisture, peppers can shed ovaries and flowers. It needs to be watered twice a day - morning and evening. Use settled and well-heated water.
The variety is also very responsive to fertilizers. During the season it is necessary to apply fertilizing 5-6 times:
- 1 fertilizing is applied after planting in a permanent place.
- 2 is applied during the flowering period of the plant.
- 3 Apply during fruit set.
- 4 Apply during fruit filling period.
- 5 Apply during the ripening period of peppers.
For feeding, a solution of superphosphate, potassium salt and urea is used. You can also use organic fertilizers as an intermediate feed.
Advice! To increase the yield of the variety, unripe fruits are picked for ripening. This will ensure rapid growth of underdeveloped fruits.
Features of cultivation
Oxheart pepper is successfully grown by gardeners both in the regions of the Urals and Siberia, and in central Russia - both under shelters and without them.
To speed up the harvest, it is necessary to correctly determine the timing of planting pepper seedlings. The optimal age for planted seedlings is 70-75 days
It is also important to take into account that seedlings are planted in a greenhouse 2-3 weeks earlier than in open ground
Growing seedlings
To grow seedlings, you can buy ready-made soil or make it by mixing garden soil with humus or vermicompost, ash and mineral fertilizers.
If the composition is not loose enough, sand or sawdust is added to it.
Before sowing, seeds can be treated with disinfectant solutions - phytosporin, potassium permarganate solution, garlic juice.
To speed up the germination of seeds, they can be soaked in a damp cloth until the sprouts appear, which usually takes 4-7 days.
Sowing is done in seed boxes - the soil is moistened, the seeds are sown every 2-3 cm to a depth of about 1 cm, after which the boxes are tightly closed, creating the semblance of a small greenhouse, and left until germination in a warm room at a temperature of 25-27 degrees.
The emerging seedlings are placed under the sun's rays in the most illuminated places or under artificial lighting lamps.
For hardening, plants are placed for 7-10 days in a room with a lower temperature - 14-16 degrees at night, 16-18 degrees during the day, after which they are returned to a mode that is comfortable for the plants.
To prevent diseases of the peppers, you need to be careful when watering - only slightly moisten the soil.
When the seedlings have several true leaves, they are planted in individual containers, and with the onset of warm days they are taken outside, accustoming them to sunlight.
Transplanting seedlings
The best predecessors for pepper are pumpkin, root vegetables, and legumes. Choose a place for pepper that is sunny and sheltered from the wind. If this is not possible, plant curtains of sunflower or corn that can protect the peppers from the wind.
Fertilizers are added to the soil - compost, ash, mineral fertilizers. If the soil is not loose enough, add peat or sawdust.
The holes are placed according to a 40x60cm pattern and watered abundantly. The seedlings are not buried; they are planted at the same level as when they grew in the seedling container. The best time for planting is a cloudy day or evening, so that the plants do not get sunburn.
After the seedlings have adapted to a new place, they take care of the peppers traditionally:
Water once a week, if the weather is hot - more often, since pepper has increased demands on soil moisture. Use drip irrigation. Mulch the soil. Mulch protects the soil from drying out, and the mulch material - weeds, hay, will provide additional nutrition to the plants when rotting. When using greenhouses, be sure to ventilate them, periodically opening the windows and doors, avoiding high air humidity. Weeding. When weeding, it is not recommended to carry out deep loosening, since the root system is located close to the surface and can be damaged when loosening. They feed. Pepper is very demanding when it comes to fertilizing - at the beginning of growth, before the formation of ovaries - with nitrogen fertilizers. Most often during this period, fertilizing from diluted mullein or grass infusion is used. After which they begin to feed with potassium-phosphorus fertilizers. All fertilizing is carried out after watering, once every two weeks. Tied to supports or trellises
It is important to do the garter before the fruits form, since the stems are very fragile and can break off from the weight of the peppers. Form a bush. All stepsons below the fork are pruned, weak ovaries are also removed if there are competitors
In the second half of summer, to ripen existing fruits, flowers and weak ovaries that do not have time to ripen are removed. To get more fruits, peppers are collected at technical ripeness and ripened indoors, creating appropriate conditions for this.
