Capsicum annuum 'Lipstick'.

The pepper for short-season climates par excellence. Developed in the late 1980s by North American breeders, the Lipstick variety was created specifically to produce ripe, fully red fruits in regions where standard large-bell peppers often refuse to turn anything but a frustrating green before frost. Its name comes from both its tapered tubular shape and its bright lacquered red colour at full maturity. For Québec gardeners, it's one of the very rare open-pollinated varieties that reliably gives, year after year, a real harvest of sweet red peppers under our climate.

Pointed conical fruits 8-10 cm long, thick meaty walls, juicy crisp flesh — surprisingly mild and sweet, often described as one of the most flavourful peppers you can grow, far outclassing the grocery-store red pepper in taste intensity. Excellent raw in slices in a salad, oven-roasted until the skin blackens then peeled for Italian-style antipasto, simmered into Basque piperade with eggs and tomatoes, made into salsa with cilantro and lime (hence the local "Salsa Sucrée" name), or simply quartered and stuffed with cheese before going in the oven. Compact plant (50-60 cm), highly productive for its size — sometimes carrying 20 fruits or more per season.

Grower's tip: Fast for a pepper — about 55-65 days for green fruits, 75-80 days for full red — but it's still a pepper, meaning it wants heat and a long season. Start indoors 8-10 weeks before last frost, at 25-28 °C on a heat mat for uniform germination. Transplant only once nights have stabilized above 12 °C, never earlier — a cold snap in early season stalls the plant for weeks. To maximize the turn to red, give the warmest spot available (against a south wall, for example) and harvest regularly as fruits ripen — each picking stimulates new flowering.

• Open-pollinated. Largely self-pollinating, but crosses possible with other nearby Capsicum annuum (peppers, other chilies); isolate or bag the flowers for seed saving.
• Height: 50-60 cm.
• Maturity: 55-65 days after transplant for green fruits, 75-80 days for red.
• Exposure: full sun, sheltered from wind.
• Rich, well-drained, warm soil. Space plants 40-50 cm apart.
• Start indoors 8-10 weeks before last frost. Transplant once all frost risk has passed (early June in Québec).