
You often hear the tip that it’s important not to grow hot peppers (chili peppers) and sweet peppers (bell peppers) in the same vegetable bed. Otherwise, the two will cross pollinate and, at the end of the season, the hot pepper will have lost its burning flavor while the sweet one will become hot as Hades.
And that would seem to make sense: after all, hot peppers and sweet peppers, despite the difference in appearance and in the intensity of their fruits’ taste, are botanically the same plant: Capsicum annuum or other species of Capsicum. (Read Sweet Pepper and Chili Pepper: Two Sides of the Same Coin for more information on the subject.) And plants of the same species will readily cross together.
In fact, though, this tip is mostly false, but with a bit of truth behind it.
No Problem With the First Year’s Harvest
Yes, hot peppers and sweet peppers will cross if planted nearby thanks to bees and other pollinators carrying pollen from one to the other, but that won’t affect the taste of fruit … at least not the first year.
The “genetic mixing” takes place in the seeds that the fruits contain, not in the fruit’s flesh. It will produce the same fruit it was genetically programed to produce, with the same shape, color and taste. And even if the seeds inside a sweet pepper now contain the gene for the production of capsaicin — the compound that gives hot peppers their burning taste —, the seed only carries the gene, it doesn’t express it. Thus, even if you surround a sweet pepper plant with hot peppers, its fruit will always have its usual sweet taste … the first year.
Moreover, any cross pollination will not affect the appearance of the fruit either … the first year that is. The hot pepper will produce a typical hot pepper, usually relatively small and elongated or lumpy, while the sweet pepper will also yield typical sweet pepper fruit, usually large and blocky.
But Watch Out for That Second Generation!

It’s only people who harvest the seeds from their vegetables for the following year (a minority of gardeners) who have to be careful not to plant two varieties of peppers close to each other. If they do, it’s true that there will almost certainly be an exchange of genes that will affect the taste and appearance of the fruit … in the second generation.
The usual recommendation, if you want to harvest seed in order to ensure a certain purity of the lineage, is to isolate different peppers by at least 30 feet (10 m) … and that will likely be impossible to do in an average home vegetable garden or community garden. And even if you could do it, at that distance, there’ll still likely be a bit of mixing, at least occasionally.
Professional seed houses must absolutely ensure perfect varietal purity and thus need to look at an even greater isolation distance: 500 feet (150 m) according to some experts while others recommend up to a mile (1.5 km). The other possibility for seed growers is to isolate peppers in some sort of shelter to which pollinating insects have no access, then to pollinate the flowers manually.
Sadly, even when seeds are produced following official distance isolation guidelines, you’ll occasionally run into a situation when a bee traveled farther than usual and brought foreign pollen to a pure variety. That explains the unpleasant surprise gardeners sometimes experience when the commercially produced seed they paid for doesn’t come “true to type” (doesn’t correspond to its description). Fortunately, that doesn’t occur all that often.
Saving Seed: Always Grow Plants in Isolation
When you are harvesting vegetable seeds of any kind for next year’s crop, no matter which vegetable you grow, be aware that there is always a serious risk of getting plants that don’t come true to type … unless you grow only one variety and are the only person in the entire neighborhood growing the vegetable in question!
This is not a myth – I have grown sweet peppers and chilli peppers close together this year (2024) and used a paintbrush to polinate. (lack of bees) the result has been some large sweet peppers which have hot spots in them. You can have a perfectly good sweet pepper, then suddenly the next mouthful is peppery. It’s not consistent through the pepper – it’s mixed sweet anmd hot bits. Some of the peppers are large (150g) so often only use one in cookng – and with the same result.
So, last night I harvested what appeared to be a small red bell pepper from one of my bell pepper plants. I’m a relatively new gardener, so was surprised that it seemed to be so ripe when while still so small. But figured that’s just something which happens.
I am very sensitive to spice, so I never buy hot peppers, grow them or even have them in the house.
This little guy wasn’t just a little spicy. My lips are still burning from tasting this monstrosity an hour ago! (It as even more confusing because what initially was hot was the zucchini I also harvested yesterday – I eventually figured out I’d cut a slice with the same knife I cut the pepper with.)
What is going on? I’ll have to look back at my seed stock – I think I combined some self-harvested and commercial ones, so may never get the bottom of this. Maybe a neighbor grew hot peppers and they crossed? But meanwhile…ouch!
This year there was a mix up of pepper seeds from one or two of the main companies that supplies them to all other companies. It has been call peppergedeon. Pepper seeds have been mixed up causing problems like getting hot when you bought sweet peppers and vice versa. So many people have had something different than what they ordered.
I’ve been called a liar so many times for this story that I usually don’t bother to tell it. But years ago in Tujunga, CA I planted a row of Jalapenos next to a row of bell peppers. One row flowered, but produced no peppers.
The other row turned out what looked and tasted like miniature bell peppers. They were sweet and juicy – and about halfway through eating one, people would realize their mouth was on fire.
Everyone I’ve told the story to who considers himself an expert has told me that it’s impossible: that I would have turned out normal jalapenos or normal bell peppers, and that any results of cross pollination would only have shown up in the following generation had I planted the seeds.
But I clearly remember the sweet taste and heat of those peppers, and I clearly remember ambushing my friends and relatives with them.
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I planted eggplant and hot peppers near each other some years ago. The eggplant fruit, especially on one eggplant, was very noticeably hot the first season.
There could be a lot of reasons for that, but eggplants will no more readily cross with a pepper plant than a housecat with a tiger.
Sorry experience is a wonderful thing. Hot peppers do cross with sweet and you can taste it the first season. It is not really hot but noticeable. Decades of gardening is a great teacher.
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Must not be a wonderful thing, you would more likely have a tomato-eggplant monstrosity than having a pepper breed with a plant in a completely different family. Maybe someone will make a banana-pepper hybrid or a raspberry-eggplant hybrid.
Could my seeds have already been crossed?
Of course.
So, why did the flesh of my bell peppers taste a bit hot when I planted them next to the habaneros and other hot peppers? My experience is what brought my attention to this. I had never heard the myth before that. I only researched it after biting into a spicy bell pepper. I grew them all from seed. It looked like a bell pepper, but had a kick.
The seed you planted could already have been crossed. Assuming you bought commercially produced seed, if the grower was not careful in isolating the plant, a cross could easily happen. It happens quite often! And if you used seed you collected yourself, the likelihood is even greater.
Not exactly true…devil is in the details as always. The seeds of a sweet pepper (not the flesh) that has been crossed with a hot pepper will actually express the capsaicin genes they contain. If you eat these seeds you sometimes get a surprise!
O.K., I’ll give you that… but normally, we don’t eat the seeds, just the flesh. But thanks for pointing out the error.
The genes are absolutely expressed in the seeds. The seeds contain both the parents genetic materials, and will produce capsicum.
Not at all a myth. I’ve experienced it personally
You didn’t read the text. Of course the genes are present in the seeds. But when you eat the fruit from a cross-pollinated pepper, you’re not eating the seeds. A sweet pepper will still taste like a sweet pepper, even if its seeds contain genes for hotness (more capsaicin). It’s when you grow the next generation that the taste will show up.
Ok, so I’ve got that the immediate crossed fruit look identical to expected, but what about the second generation fruit? Might those fruit have an altered appearance, as well as an altered taste?
Of course, if they crossed with another variety, color, shape, taste, etc. will be different.