Sweet Peppers

Sweet Peps with curling leaf on top

One whole Roma - should I pull the bottom leaves?

More Roma bad leaves...

Oh, and sorry for the multiple posts. I am trying to figure out multiple uploads :(

All I can offer is not to use woody mulches on veggies - I understand they can be acidic & encourage bacterial diseases. I find that rotted hay seems to help keep diseases at bay.

Plants look healthy on top - which makes me think the problem is coming from below...?

FWIW, HTH

Amisoup,

I plant mine in the ground and mulch them in woodchips and my plants get huge so that is not the issue.

I can see what looks like a bit of old leafminer trails in a few of the yellowed leaves but I believe your problem is simply fertilizer burn, nitrogen burn. You put them in a good mix and then LEAVE THEM ALONE :) Just water them. Never and I mean never ever fertilize plants that look unhappy unless you are 100% sure the reason they are unhappy is they are deficient in something.

I plant my plants and they don't get any fertilizer at all after that...none and the plants get over 8 feet tall.

Water them a LOT let the water run through them for a couple hours to try to remove the overload of Nitrogen then resume normal watering once they dry a bit. Don't add anymore fertilizer the rest of the season.

> I am trying to figure out multiple uploads

If you are uploading pictures directly from your computer the limit is one per post. To do multiple photos in one post your photos must be hosted online someplace like photobucket, for example.

Thanks for the info, guys. The peppers started the yellow leaves and spots before I ever gave them a drop of fertilizer. The fish emulsion and compost tea has been given 2x on the FE and the tea only one time, at dusk. They are also getting a TON of water because it's been raining a ton - I'm in North Florida and one week we had 3+ inches, with 2 before and after that week....

Ami - With the rains, heat and humidity we all get foliage diseases one time or another. Don't do any foliar feeding because that can aggravate the problem. Spray bt only if you see worms. Any leaves that don't look good, I would cut them, move the mulch a little bit away from the stems of the plant. And next time that you prepare the bed for planting don't mix the soil underneath, put amendments in layers on top of the bed.
Don't pull any plants unless they show no signs of improvement, as long as we get a harvest that is the only thing that matter. Don't expect perfection in the garden, there is always bad leaves and bugs there. Just have to do daily inspection so the problems don't get out of hand.
Keep trying, practice makes perfect.:)

Silvia

Until the BT discovery, we had the most amazing armyworm breeding facility in our backyard. I tell you, we could have won awards. Our spring tomatoes were terribly destroyed, but we now know about the life saving BT. So that's down, and we were expecting some beautiful, trouble free veggies this fall :). FAT CHANCE of that happening, as you guys all know. Now we are learning the ropes for yellowing leaves and black/brown spots and I'm wondering if it'll ever end.

So Silvia, you don't think I should pull the peppers because they look terrible? Just pull the leaves with marks on them? And leave them alone after that?

Thanks guys!

Amisoup,

I guarantee you it is nitrogen burn. What exactly did you put in the Mel's mix as the compost part and did you add anything extra?

Fertilizers tend to make happy plants happier and unhappy plants much sadder.

Those plants look darn good to me, especially the peppers... mine are G--awful, all twisted and brown, from CHILI-THRIPS....sally

Amy - During the summer most peppers look bad, when coming to cooler weather like now I either trim them or just take out the bad leaves. I did that about last week on few peppers that I am planning to keep and they all are getting new growth.

Sally - I found this at the store, I used the yellow one and it works good! next I am going to try the blue one. I will post results.

Silvia

I think your plants look pretty good for growing in the summer. Once it cools off, my sweet peppers perk up and start really producing. I grew hot ones this summer that did well. I couldn't believe all the stink bugs on them. I thought hot peppers were a repellant. Also, I never let my tomato leaves near the ground.

Thank you guys so much for the replies and advice. I am going to remove the yellow and yellow-rimmed leaves from the peppers. We have actually seen quite a "growth spurt" with the seedlings since I first posted, and I can only attribute that to the compost tea. It even rained yesterday! How often do you guys apply a tea? I am thinking I will do it again in two weeks (I put it on the first time about a week ago), do you think that would burn the plants since they have yellow stuff?

Hi Silvia- Thanks for posting that pic, do you know if it is effective against CHILI THRIPS? They are not the same as regular thrips which are visible, these nasties are so small they are practically invisible, they have devastated my roses, and the only thing that I have heard of to get them is SPINOSAD... which is expensive... I don't spray, at least until now, because of the butterflys, bees and birds... and that stuff is deadly for bees... I'd love to find some way to get them, I did use some yellow sticky cards for whitefly on my 'maters and did catch some of them, they are visible.... but not enough to save the 'maters, last year.... thanks for your help, I appreciate any suggestions, sally