Prime Time Sales LLC in Coachella, CA, exclusive sales agent for Prime Time International, which specializes in bell peppers year-round with production in Mexico and California, has in recent years added mini peppers to its offerings.

“This is our third season of growing them in Culiacan [Sinaloa, Mexico],” said Mike Aiton, marketing manager.

Conner Melancon, Jeff Johnson, Mike Way, Jeff Taylor and Jim Auchard of Prime Time Sales. (Photo courtesy of Prime Time Sales LLC)The mini peppers are a growth item for the company. “We just continue to expand the plantings year on year, based on the success we are having,” Mr. Aiton said. “We are finding that it is a promotable item.” The company anticipates a lot of continued growth in the mini peppers “as consumers really latch onto this item. We are still optimistic” about the future growth of the program.

The company has “doubled our production [of mini peppers] in Mexico each of the last two years, and we are having very good results,” he continued. “It is a fast-growing item.”

This year, “we should have those available from mainland Mexico, loading in Nogales, all the way until the beginning of April,” he said. That will coincide with the seasonality of the company’s various bell pepper products in Culiacan, which were also expected to run through March and into the first part of April.

In Culiacan, Prime Time grows peppers in both open-field and protected environments, Mr. Aiton said.

“On the field-grown side of the business, we have field-grown red and green bell peppers,” with the greens being almost exclusively grown outdoors, he said. This year, “we are going to be a little bit lighter on green bells later on in the spring, as we have converted our later plantings to red peppers as opposed to green. So we will be a little bit heavier, I think, in the spring on reds” with “certainly promotable volumes, generally speaking, all the way to the middle part of March, and hopefully beyond.”

The majority of what Prime Time produces in mainland Mexico, however, is grown indoors. That includes hothouse red, yellow and orange bell peppers, which are “a big part of our business, both in the U.S. and Canada,” Mr. Aiton said.

“We do a lot of custom bagging for different customers on the hothouse varieties according to what they want,” he said. “Bagging is a big part of what we do.”

In addition to blocky-style bell peppers, Prime Time also grows elongated red bells. Those are “still a big part of our business and very important to us,” Mr. Aiton said.

With Prime Time’s mainland Mexico production coming almost exclusively from Culiacan, the company was fortunate to avoid damage from the freeze that affected growing areas further north in mid-January. “We weren’t really [hurt] by any of the freeze or the weather they had,” Mr. Aiton said Feb. 12. “We were just a bit south of where the problems were, so no real problems for us, weather-related — at this point, anyway.”

With Prime Time’s Culiacan production going, generally speaking, to around the first of April, “about that time we transition over to the Baja side” of the Gulf of California, where the company also has bell pepper production in the La Paz area, he said. the transition from Culiacan to Baja “is a pretty seamless transition for us. We are not expecting any interruption in supplies.” That product, which crosses into the San Diego area rather than Nogales, will carry the company’s Mexican program through to the first of June.

In Baja, in addition to bell peppers, Prime Time has a tomato program consisting of grape tomatoes, vine-ripened round tomatoes and Romas.