Bell pepper Corno di Toro Rosso seeds

The 'Corno di Toro Rosso' Pepper is an Italian variety that offers curious elongated and incurved, red fruits, about 20 cm long and renowned for their sweet flavour and thick, delicious flesh. This pepper owes its name "Red Bull Horn" to the shape of its fruits that resembles a bull's horn. This sweet and sugary pepper is suitable for many culinary uses. You can enjoy it raw, incorporate it into salads, grill it, stuff it, or use it in various cooked dishes. It is an early variety, its fruit is among the first to ripen and preserves very well pickled in vinegar. Sow from February to May for a harvest from July to November.

We usually distinguish a difference between peppers and chillies. The pepper is a term for a chilli without or almost without capsaicin, the substance that produces the spicy, even burning effect.

The Pepper is a fruit vegetable which, like its very close relative the Chilli, belongs to the Solanaceae family. It is a perennial plant in tropical climates that is cultivated as an annual in our latitudes unless it has been potted so that it can be stored in warmth during the off-season. It produces small, white or purple flowers, with anthers or seeds of different colours depending on the species.

In the kitchen, the pepper is consumed raw in salads, quickly grilled, or cooked as a confit, in ratatouille or stuffed. It is one of those "sun fruits" much appreciated in summer.

In the garden or on the balcony for the most compact varieties, it is a vegetable plant that appreciates sun, heat, and regular watering. In cold climates, it benefits from being grown under cover. It is grown in rich soil, previously amended with 3 kg of compost per m2.

Harvest: the harvest takes place when the fruit has the colour it is supposed to have when ripe. Pick the fruits with a small knife or by hand as needed, taking care to leave one to two cm of the peduncle. Also, note that the pepper continues to ripen after being detached from the plant.

Storage: peppers can be stored for several days in the vegetable drawer of the refrigerator. Depending on the quantity of your production, you will most likely want to keep them a little longer. There are several methods: Firstly, drying can be done in several ways: either in the sun by cutting the peppers in half lengthwise. Air-drying indoors is only possible if the conditions are dry enough, otherwise the fruits will become soft. It can be done with whole fruits in the oven on the rack at low temperature (about 50°C) for several hours.
You can also opt for the preservation of fresh peppers. You can store them marinated in oil with herbs, in vinegar pickles style, or reduce them to puree. For these last methods, there are plenty of recipes. You can also freeze your peppers. In all cases, wash and dry them carefully.

The gardener's tip: To combat red spider mites, plant radishes nearby.