Dawn thinks they are 'Yummy'. I thought I planted a couple of seed last year, but maybe they didn't make it to my garden because I didn't have any of them. I have read the description of 'Yummy' and it sounds close. They are really good, aren't they?

I believe they are the "mini bell" variety, I know that ferry-morse has some of the seed.

The mini bell that I have grown is just like a bell pepper but smaller. This pepper is different. It is not exactly like a bell shape on bottom, the flesh is very thin, sweet, and crisp, and I am guessing that all those colors grow on the same vine like Yummy. There is also a Yum Yum that looks a lot like the Sam's and WM pepper.

Actually, I do not think they are exactly the 'Yummy' pepper but I do think that Yummy Orange and Yummy Mix are the most identical to them of all the sweet pepper varieties available to the home gardener. They are close enough that they seem almost identical, but it is only 'almost' identical, not totally identical. I have grown Yummy for three years now and has the same sweet flavor and can remain fresh in the refrigerator for a pretty long time, just like the mini peppers you buy at the store. My experience with Yummy is that sometimes they look more like an elongated bell and sometimes they don't look as lobed, so I think it is likely they too are a cross between a longer chili and a sweet bell like the proprietary varieties used by commercial growers. Breeders generally don't like to release too much proprietary data about the seeds they develop, so info on the sweet vining mini-peppers is fairly obscure.

The mini-sweet peppers are from a Bionova seed line developed in the late 1990s, and it is said to have been developed by crossing sweet peppers with chili peppers. Clearly they have some of the shape of some long chili peppers but the flavor of sweets. If the seed company or produce companies have given these peppers a name other than mini-sweet vine peppers, I've never heard it. Because these peppers are so popular, I suspect the commercial producers do not want for us home gardeners to be able to obtain the same seed variety they use and as far as I know they've been able to keep the seed off the home gardeners market, likely by signing contracts that restrict the seed to commercial growers only.

I'm going to link the Totally Tomatoes listing for Yummy Mix. Note the elongated shape and, while Totally Tomatoes lists them in the mini-bell section, they are actually not true bells. The true mini-bells, which I have grown for at least 10 years now, mostly have a true bell shape, although some of them are a little more rounded.

Some people have tried saving seed from the sweet vining mini peppers purchased at stores and have had mixed results. The peppers do not necessarily produce a lot of seed anyway, and when grown out, the results are highly variable, which is often exactly what you see with seed saved from hybrid varieties.

Yummy Orange was one of my best producers last year. They showed great heat-tolerance and drought-tolerance and produced very heavily.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Yummy Mix at Totally Tomatoes

Sorry Dawn, I didn't intend to mis-quote you there and the discussion we had was several years ago. I have tried to find a pepper seed just like them and haven't succeeded so I think you are correct about it not being available to home gardeners. They are very good.

No, Carol, it is OK. No need to apologize. Years ago, just from viewing Yummy in photos and then growing one Yummy Orange plant I had thought they were the same. But after three years of growing and seeing a slight difference, I no longer think they are "identical". I still think they are very close.

For some reason, Yummy Orange grows much better for me than the red or yellow ones. Now, even that fits in with what we know publicly about the commercially grown sweet vining mini peppers because it has been stated that they are three separate varieties, not the same variety in three colors, if that makes any sense. The difference in the vigor between the orange Yummy and the other two colors of Yummy makes me think they likely are three different varieties, or three strains of one variety, and not just the same variety in three colors. Why does this all have to be so confusing?

Dawn

You can purchase them at other grocery markets as well. I kept the seeds from a bag I bought this past winter. I started the seeds indoor in the the spring. They have done very well and are oh so delicious!

I can believe that they have hot pepper in their ancestory. I bought another bag a few days ago and several were about as spicy as a cubanelle, which is only about 100 Scoville or so. Just enough to detect some pungency. They were still delicious though.

We got some mini peppers from Sprouts last spring and I also planted seeds. They grew well and were sweet, though smaller than the ones purchased. You can't tell the difference between them and the jalapenos, looks wise. I expect it was a hybrid, since it is not quite as good as original. I'm going to put it in the green house since it grew best of my sweets this year. Maybe I will save seeds.

This was a really great summer for the "Yummy" peppers and I've noticed more of this type in seed catalogs lately. I think the last one I saw was in HPS's 2015 seed catalog that arrived here around late July or early August. I'll see if I can find that one and link it.

Okay, so I found it and linked it. The yellow Sparkler is the one I was remembering. HPS also carries Yummy Mix, but sometimes the seeds in the HPS catalog are in quantities much higher than I'd ever use, so I go to one of the sister seed companies owned by the same company (Totally Tomatoes is one of them) to order the same seed in a smaller quantity.

Dawn.

Here is a link that might be useful: Yellow Sparkler peppers