Two (2) large live plants – big, healthy, ready to grow, premium pepper plants, 4” to 8” tall plants, in 4” pots. NON GMO No Neonicotinoids Wonderful eaten fresh from the garden or used in your favorite dishes, this rich, sweetly flavored pepper is well-suited for stuffing and Italian cuisine Season long harvest. Produces peppers all season long. They can be harvested at all stages and only get sweeter as they go from green to orange to red. 10x Root Development means these plants grow stronger right from the start Grown in the Midwest. Plant in any US Zone. Plant in containers, small spaces, balconies, patios or large gardens. Benefits from caging or staking. Treat as a tender annual in Zones 9 and colder Careful Packaging. Your fresh plants arrive quickly in our exclusive, eco-friendly, 100% recyclable box. 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Includes our Clovers Garden copyrighted Quick Start Planting Guide The Melrose Pepper plant is thought to be an heirloom frying pepper brought from Italy years ago. These tasty peppers quickly became popular with the gardeners in the Italian community of Melrose Park, Illinois. A local grocer found out about the peppers and started selling them, making the peppers well known in the Chicagoland area. Eventually, the peppers were commonly called Melrose Peppers. As demand for the Melrose Peppers grew, local small scale farmers began growing them, making them available for sale at vegetable stands and grocery stores across the greater Chicagoland area. The christened “Melrose Pepper” remained a local variety for many years, virtually unknown outside of the Chicago area until the 1990s. Word of the Italian frying pepper began to leak out as people transplanted from the Chicagoland area to other places. Now you can find the seeds for these delicious peppers on-line, though the plants are hard to come by. Melrose Peppers grow a 4-inch, thin skinned fruit that turns from green to brilliant red when ripe. They have a rich flavor and amazingly sweet taste. They are equally great eaten fresh or fried, excellent for salads, roasting, and stir-frying. Place these plants in a part to full sun location 18 inches apart. Peppers need a nutrient rich loamy soil with adequate weekly watering of at least 1 inch of water. You can easily enrich the soil by adding shredded leaves and grass clippings along with rotted manure. Plants will grow 18-24 inches tall, these peppers are considered to be a “tender plant” and do not do well in extremes of weather conditions. The peppers will start to mature in 65-75 days of seeding, and will continue to produce through the summer