Trial: Annual

Year Trialed: 2007

Good Qualities

The white fruit made for an interesting addition to the more common Capsicum offerings; Easy to germinate, grow transplants and to transplant; Customers find it very unique, adds great interest to arrangements with peppers turned yellow/orange/red early; Earliest of 10 ornamental pepper cultivars, first harvest August 17 or 2 months after transplanting to the high tunnel and about 10 days before Conic White/Red, nice presentation of cluster of peppers, good workable length for bouquet work, bright clear lemon yellow early (so-called white) is very attractive for September bouquets; Fruit is upright and nice in mixed bouquets, I used it in yellow and red stages, customers love the idea of peppers in bouquet- many wanted to eat them; Very unique addition to cutflower bouquets, drought tolerant, saline tolerant, no insect damage; Easy to grow, produced a 20 to 24 inch plant; “Topfruit” is accurate, fruit is great for mixed bouquets, I liked the yellow-orange-red all together look, still cutting on 10/20!; Colorful fall decoration; All stages of coloring (pepper) are attractive and appropriate to cut, scant number of leaves snap off quickly and easily, essentially all stems have good length and pepper quantity and quality; Earliest of the Cappas to have useable fruit; Stayed upright without support, slender fruits were attractive, red, orange, light yellow in color at the same time, vigorous growth.

Problems

Too short (3); Growing season not long enough or hot enough to obtain crop, the plants grew well but flowered about the time of the first frost, one of the Conic had a fruit and it looked good but not enough to further evaluate the cultivars; Almost too early, high temps in July/August this year pushed maturity before florists were interested in ornamental peppers, these were grown in high tunnels because we normally get a frost in mid-Sept.; None really; Difficulty hardening before transplanting; Only mild interest from florists, could not sell much, they wanted one color, not many shades of yellow to red; Stink bugs loved this plant. fruit dropped before coloring; Pungency may be a problem for some customers, this variety is hot; This pepper lost a lot of length because we cut several inches of the top to show the peppers, this is not a topfruit pepper as description states; Fruits are bunched together rather than being spaced along stem; First flush of peppers was at 10 to 12 inches then it continued growing but following fruit did not mature; Crop did not mature even in a plastic tunnel.

Similar Cultivars

The Starburst series, but ‘Cappa Topfruit’ has larger, plumper fruit; Similar upright habit to ‘Nippon Tak’a pepper from Johnny’s.

Comments

I love this one – ornamental peppers are not yet really popular with most Nebraska florists, partly because there has not been a local wholesale company offering them, they will eventually get on-board; We used the peppers in brides maids bouquets for a fall wedding this year – they were a big hit!; Nicest pepper for bunching, excellent late season addition; Best ‘on-top’ pepper I have grown, customers asked specifically for these in bouquets; We seeded all of our peppers quite late, thankfully we had a warm fall and were able to see the fruits, although mostly in a green state; Last years top round bronze pepper is much more useable and a better seller in bouquets.

Postharvest

Leaves are easiest to strip when fresh in the field; Defoliation is time consuming, we tried ethrel spray at 1000 ppm, but got little defoliation: perhaps tunnel was too cool by then. See separate postharvest report for results from NC State University postharvest evaluations.

Trial Data

¹1 to 5 scale, with 5 being the best. Market ratings are based on sales to wholesalers, retailers, or final consumers direct.

Supplier

Kieft Seed
P.O. Box 618
Conway, WA 98238