The Carmen pepper is a sweet, zero-heat hybrid Italian pepper with a distinctive curved horn shape. It offers robust fruity sweetness even when green and matures in about 75 days, earning the 2006 AAS award for its versatility and early ripening.
The Carmen pepper, also known as Corno di Toro in Italy, is an F1 hybrid sweet pepper featuring an elongated, horn-shaped pod that tapers to a pointed tip. Fruits grow 6-8 inches long and 2.5-3 inches wide at the shoulders, weighing about 5 ounces, with medium-thick walls and a wide cavity. They ripen from green to a deep dark crimson red. Unlike many sweet peppers that taste grassy or bitter when immature, Carmen maintains a sweet, fruity flavor from the green stage onward, making it versatile for harvest at any time. The robust sweetness and thick walls excel in roasting, grilling, stuffing, frying, and fresh uses like salads or salsas. Plants are upright and productive, typically 28-30 inches tall (sometimes reaching over 6 feet) with a 16-inch spread, adaptable across temperatures and suitable for containers. This variety was developed by Johnny's Selected Seeds based on traditional Corno di Toro peppers and won the 2006 All-America Selections award for its unique shape, consistent sweetness, high yields, and earliness.
No photos of Carmen Pepper here yet. Got one? Share it with us.
The Carmen pepper is a hybrid cultivar developed by Johnny's Selected Seeds based on the traditional Italian Corno di Toro (bull's horn) pepper. It was named after the gypsy character Carmen from the famous French opera. In 2006, it won the All-America Selections award for its exceptional sweetness, unique shape, early ripening, and high yields, making it widely adaptable for home gardens and commercial use.
Promote a product tied to Carmen Pepper? This slot is open.
Reach out →Sweet and fruity, similar to a red bell pepper but with more robust sweetness even when green, lacking the grassy or bitter notes common in other immature sweet peppers.
Huge shout-out to the breeders, growers, researchers, and seed savers linked below — their independent work is what lets us fact-check our own. Go visit them.
These references are used to verify what we publish — not as the source of the content itself. Seed catalogs, breeder pages, research papers, and cultivar databases let us cross-check every fact before it lands here. Open any card to read the original or dig deeper.
