GardenPepper variety
Big Bertha Pepper
✓ In your garden
Big Bertha is a large sweet bell pepper that ripens green to red in about 70 days. Great fresh, stuffed, or roasted. Grow it like any pepper — full sun, warm soil, and steady water; the calendar below pins your start and plant-out dates for your zone.
“A large bell pepper with no real heat — grown for flavor, not fire.”
Growing basics — shared by every pepper
Big Bertha grows like any other pepper. The full picture — how deep to plant, spacing, feeding, pests, harvest — lives on the Pepper page so it's maintained in one place.
- Sun
- Full Sun
- Spacing (in row)
- 12–24 in
- Row spacing
- 18–36 in
- Planting depth
- 0.25–0.5 in
- Soil pH
- 6–7
- Water
- Moderate
What is Big Bertha good for?
- Fresh & saladsCrisp and sweet raw. Great
- Stuffing & roastingThick walls hold a filling. Great
- Salsa & hot sauceNo heat to bring. Skip it
- PicklingGood sliced into rings. Great
From how it grows and tastes — kitchens vary.
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Want the full 10/50/90% odds + nearest stations? Open the frost tool →When to plant Big Bertha in your zone
Zone 6bGreenhouse or cover on: your start slides ~4 weeks earlier and your harvest stretches ~3 weeks later (shown striped).
Planting seeds straight in the ground only works where the season's long and warm — most gardeners start seeds indoors or buy young plants, or you'd pick your first tomato right as frost hits.
Comfortable — first ripe fruit lands around early Jul, well before your typical frost (~late Oct).
- Start seeds indoors
- early Feb – early Mar
- Toughen up outside
- late Apr – early May
- Move plants outside
- early May – early May
- Growing
- early May – early Jul
- Picking
- early Jul until frost (~late Oct)
Typical dates for zone 6b — set your zone or ZIP above for yours.
What to plant near Big Bertha — and what to keep away
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BasilTraditional
Same bed conditions, same kitchen destiny.
The badge is the honesty. Trialed = a published field trial · Practical = a real mechanism · Traditional = companion-chart lore. These pairings hold for every pepper.
Pairings compiled from West Virginia University Extension.
Growing Big Bertha — the things that trip people up
- You can pick it green (unripe) for a milder, crisper pepper, or leave it on the plant to ripen to full color and sweetness — your call.
- Peppers love warmth. Don’t rush transplants into cold soil — they sulk below about 55°F. Wait for warm nights, and they take off.
Big Bertha pepper at a glance
| Type | Bell |
|---|---|
| Days to ripe | 70 days after you plant it outside |
| Color | Green, Red |
| Fruit size | Large |
Extra fields from seed-catalog listings and university growing guides. Days to ripe and disease resistance shift with your climate and seed source — double-check with your local extension office before you buy.
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Common questions about Big Bertha
How hot is Big Bertha?
It has no real heat — a sweet pepper grown for flavor. Heat varies with weather and ripeness, but this one stays mild.
How long does Big Bertha take to grow?
About 70 days from transplant to the first ripe fruit. In shorter seasons, start seeds indoors 8–10 weeks before your last frost so it has time to color up.
What color does Big Bertha turn?
It ripens green to red. You can harvest it green and unripe for a crisper, milder pepper, or wait for full color for the sweetest (or hottest) flavor.
Browse more pepper varieties →