The National Garden Bureau has dubbed 2015 “The Year of the Sweet Pepper.”

Here’s a useful and tasty vegetable. Use it raw in salads, on a snack tray or packed in a lunch box.

Or cook it with onions, garlic or tomatoes. Stuff it with rice or meat. Roast or fry it to go with many kinds of vegetables.

Peppers are most likely to begin as green fruits, ripening to ivory, red, yellow, orange, purple or brown. They may be harvested at any time, sometimes tasting different as they mature. As a rule, the riper they are, the more nutritious they become. They may be tiny, as baby bells; long and a bit zippy (sweet banana) or shorter and skinnier, excellent for frying (cubanelle) or the popular “bell” type, which hangs from its bush like a bell.

A reader may ask, “Why are you telling us about peppers in snowtime?” To grow a crop of peppers from seed, choose the seeds now. Shortly, racks of garden seeds will be displayed in garden centers, greenhouses, hardware stores and markets. Catalogs offer a range of choices: try Harris Seeds (P. O. Box 24966, Rochester, NY, 14624) , Nichols Garden Nursery (1190 Old Salem Rd. NE, Albay, OR 97321) or Pinetree Garden Seeds & Accessories (P. O. Box 300, New Gloucester, ME 04260), whose entire, colorful catalog is worth a look.

Pepper seeds need time and moist warmth to sprout, and more time to develop indoors because they will be planted outdoors in warm weather.

I have left out all the hot peppers and chili peppers on purpose, so you can get started with the sweet ones. Later, grow the hot ones, planting them so they don’t cross-pollinate the sweet varieties, which could result in burnt tongues.

Want more on sweet peppers? Ask me! Send your questions to news@boothbayregister.com.