Plant highlight: Bell Peppers

Bell peppers are known for their high vitamin C content, which is good for the immune system.  Aside from vitamin C, it's also packed with many other beneficial vitamins A, B6 and E.
These peppers come in a beautiful array of colors that can be eaten raw or cooked, it easily jazzes up a meal and can be served in a variety of ways.

I'm a cheapo and I find supermarket bell peppers quite pricey, which makes it an ideal crop for me to grow!  As you may guess, my plant growing guideline is to plant crops that are sold for a good price in the market and ones that I simply enjoy eating!

Just as every other plant we have, we started these bell pepper plants from seed.  These are the purple variety by the way.

Sweet bell peppers can be eaten at any stage but they get sweeter as they ripen. You can pick them while still a green color and let it ripen on the shelf, but the longer it stays on the plant as it ripens to a red color, the higher the vitamin content.

If you may have noticed, green bell peppers are sold at a lower price compared to yellow and red bell peppers, that's because the red ones took more time ripening on the plant before harvest. 

The bell pepper seeds have a good germination rate and are quite easy to grow.
As the plant reaches about 8 to 10 inches, it may start to throw out buds, these buds bloom into beautiful white flowers and later on becomes the bell pepper fruit.

The purple variety fruit starts off as a light green fruit, the purple color is actually a transition color, and as it continues to ripen it eventually turns to yellow, orange then red.

It's very amusing to watch the fruit change color, it reminds me of an everlasting gobstopper!

So fun to watch the change in color

A simple dish of stir fried squid, celery and bell peppers