Jalapmann, going to throw a few thoughts and ideas your way.

BLS is pretty common in my area. What most of us do is just stay on top of it till about mid or end of July. By that time that plants are large enough out-pace any new infections. It does the most harm with young plants, if left unchecked.

Turning over the soil once in the fall, and again in the springtime supposedly helps (i am not sure of this). Remove all plants at the end of the season. Innoculating your soil with good bacteria can help thin-out the bad stuff (certain fertilizers, like Tomato-Tone contain beneficial bacteria). A layer of mulch after plant-out prevents soil splash-up.

Preventative sprayng, starting from plant-out, helps the most. The past few years i've been spraying around once a week, and after rainstorms. I alternate weekly between Copper concentrate and Serenade garden disease control. I usually stop spraying at the end of July since the plants are big and healthy enough to fend for themselves. There have been a couple of bad years where i sprayed the entire summer though.

Technically you should also soak your fresh harvested seed, and soak it again before sowing them in the springtime. I included a link below to help better explain.

Good luck.

Steve

Here is a link that might be useful: BLS management

Thanks, steve.

What's interesting is symptoms did not appear until July - when the plants were almost full grown. Maybe that's why they're suffering through the infection and aren't all dead like a younger plant would succumb. My jalapenos are suffering the most, dropping week-old fruit. Just brushing by the plant will cause fruit to drop.

I will take note to start treating early next year. I have actually used the serenade spray - but its the manual spray bottle. Do you use a hose to spray concentrate?

NP.

I would never write off Jalapeno's, i like the ripe ones too much, but certain ones also fared the worst for me. You might be able to start spraying now, it may help with the final pods that are forming. I forgot to mention that allowing more space between plants also slows down the spread.

Concentrates are normally sprayed out of an inexpensive sprayer, i've linked one below as an example.

Steve

Here is a link that might be useful: Pump Sprayer

This post was edited by sjetski on Sun, Aug 17, 14 at 15:23

One of my BLS-affected jalapenos is turning its fruit black. This is a "mucho nacho" variety. Is this a symptom of BLS? Never seen them turn this color before.

From what I have read in the past it will not remain in the dirt for long. The info I read said it stayed in the soil, at the most, about 3 months.
Pam

If it (the pod) feels solid, i.e. not soft, then I'd go with it as normal.

Dennis