loveykatie
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Joined: Fri Mar 09, 2012 1:50 pm
Location: Maryland

Bell Pepper Problem - Photos

Three days ago these peppers were doing fine. I was so excited to actually have my first peppers of the season! Yesterday I noticed weird looking spots on the leaves of only two out of the four pepper plants, and today I noticed the peppers look sick.

Any help would be appreciated!!

[url=https://postimage.org/image/hwwxlvjnn/][img]https://s13.postimage.org/hwwxlvjnn/photo_1_1.jpg[/img][/url]

[url=https://postimage.org/image/eekxphirn/][img]https://s13.postimage.org/eekxphirn/photo_2_1.jpg[/img][/url]

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mtmickey
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Looks like sun scald to me, but hopefully more knowledgeable people will come along. Did you move them directly into the sun?

loveykatie
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Nope! They've been in the same spot for some time now. They do get direct sun, and it's been over 100 degrees for a few days with a terrible storm a couple nights ago. Hopefully someone will have some good advice. My other three pepper plants aren't producing any fruit yet.

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rainbowgardener
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I agree, looks like sunburn. Typically that would occur on plants that aren't well hardened off or as suggested got moved in to more sun. But maybe it is just too ... darned hot and sunny for them. Think about moving them to an area with a little bit of shade from the hottest afternoon sun.

Also that it a very small pot for them. In the kind of weather you are talking about, you will need to water twice a day probably. And then watering that often will flush out a lot of nutrients so you will need to fertilize a lot.

Put them in bigger pots and mulch over the surface of the pot to help keep the soil cooler and conserve water.

loveykatie
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Location: Maryland

But...what's with the weird spots all over the leaves of this plant?
Looks sick!

hobbyfarmer
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Location: East Lewis Cnty,wa

I would agree these look like sunscald, we see this in the northwest some years when it goes from 45 to 80 literally overnight! Peppers like some afternoon shade.
Have you tried the new gel products for pots? might help keep some even moisture levels for you. I haven't tried them since mine are in raised beds and the NW is cooler than usual the last few weeks.
The spots I think are just sunburn :(

barrelslime
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I know the storm had strong winds, did the cages get blown over? Were they disrupted in any way from the wind? Looks like the roots may have been disrupted. Just a suggestion.

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rainbowgardener
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If they went through a big windstorm, they could just be desiccated.

The tail end of hurricane Charlie went through my area a few years ago. It was very strange, I guess had no water left, so for us it was a dry hurricane, a bunch of high winds and no rain. We mainly had a half hour of really high winds. It was fairly early in spring and all the trees were leafed out but with new tender leaves. Every leaf was dried out, brown and crispy.

The trees eventually dropped them all and started over, put out new leaves. But I had never seen anything like it.

But they do not look diseased, just burned in some fashion, sun and/or high winds.

gardenvt
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I lost the leaves to 3 of my 14 pepper plants after planting due to high winds. The plants were bare naked but now have leaves and one is putting out flowers.

As for the size of pot, peppers will do just fine in a 5 gallon pot.

Give them some time.



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