Denise Griggs

Mk Neal wrote:It might also be sunscald.  We've had some really hot sunny days, leafs can get sunburned.  Especially if the leaf had been shaded by something,  like another plant, and then is exposed to full sun.  Also water droplets can act as little magnifying lenses and cause burnspots in strong sunlight.

We did have some extremely hot days at the beginning of last week. I guess I've assumed that it can't really get too hot for chiles, but apparently I was wrong! If it gets that bad again, I'll be sure to move them where they'll get a bit of shade.

Sionainn Cailís wrote:I am certainly no expert (rather the opposite) but to me this looks like chlorosis of the plants. Chlorosis is usually caused by nutrient deficiencies - the actual specific deficiency can vary.

Can be caused by under or over watering, waterlogged soils, or excessive fertilizers. You mentioned the large volume of rain, does the plant have a drainage hole in the pot to let excess water escape? And could it have lost soil out of the pot due to heavy downpours?

Also, I have no idea what your specific fertilizer is, but could it have been applied a bit too liberally? Overfertilizing can cause the roots to shrivel back or prevent them from taking up water, which then stresses the plant and triggers for it to dieback.

Hopefully someone else here can be a better assist in your pepper help. :) As I said, I am no expert so not sure if that is chlorosis.I wish you fhe best of luck though to save your peppers.

Thanks for your thoughts, Sionainn.

The planter does have drainage, and it's screened so no soil is lost when I water them.

Neptune's Harvest is just a fish emulsion, which I gave to all my growing veggies last weekend at 2T per gallon of water. It's just 2-4-1, so nothing heavy duty. The peppers are the only things not doing well this week. I think the habanero is done for, unfortunately. The ghost pepper looks a bit sad but hasn't reacted as strongly as the hab. Fortunately the Carolina reaper (the most important plant, from my husband's perspective) is as happy as ever (it's in the blue planter in the pic below).

Yesterday morning my husband noticed that both the habanero and ghost pepper plants have developed white splotches on the leaves, and many of the leaves of the habanero had already started to wilt and fall off. The habanero is in even worse shape this morning. They looked perfectly healthy a few days ago.

Some details in case they help:

• I repotted these back in May, using PRO-MIX, in a window-style planter.


• A Carolina reaper, which sits right next to these plants in a separate planter, shows no signs of this.


• We got a lot of rain this week (2 inches). When we're short on rain, I generally use tap water.


• Last weekend I gave the plants some Neptune's Harvest fish fertilizer for the first time ever.


• I'm in southern Indiana, zone 6.

Any ideas? Both plants are covered in peppers, and we don't want to lose them!

A leaf from the ghost pepper:


The habanero this morning:

Jeremy Devers wrote:What is the consistency of your soil? I ask because mine is a clay loam and I think it could stick to a vertical surface when even slightly moist. Maybe the best solution would be to widen the base so the sides aren't so steep. Once roots invade (I sprinkled white clover seeds on day one and they sprouted very quickly and now I have a basically natural hill with a wooden core.)

Our native soil is heavy clay and would stick to anything, but we used most of the clay that we dug out of the hole to make a sort of berm along the back of the house, to hopefully help prevent water from getting into our basement. We are at the bottom of our local watershed, and with our heavy clay backyard, moisture is major issue. It's been a swamp back there all spring. I chose this particular spot for the hugelbeet because it's at a low point, and so will be able to collect a lot of water. Last fall, before we got the wood in, the hole filled up with water after just one heavy rain (the hole is about 128 cu ft., or 957 gall.), if that tells you anything. We're seriously thinking about digging a small pond (our neighbor has one, for the same reason).

Anyway, I ordered a mix of compost/topsoil from a mulch place to cover the bed with, since I didn't want to try to grow vegetables in that clay mess, so I don't know if it'll be sticky enough when moist to stick to the steep sides. Maybe I could mix some of my clay back in to the compost/soil mix, although the thought of adding yet more physical labor to this already daunting project just makes me want to have a lie down!

One thought I had this morning was to grab some big burlap sacks from a local coffee roaster in town and tie them around the lower 2 ft or so to help keep things in place until I've got some plants in there. I think straw bales could work too, but when I mentioned it to my husband he looked a bit dismayed! He's far more concerned about tidiness and aesthetics than I am.

Thanks for your thoughts. I'm really excited to see how this whole experiment turns out. I'm going to attach an image of what it looked like last fall (we added another foot or more this spring when a big storm blew off the top of one of our trees; also those pepper plants in the middle are gone, so it's a sort of u-shaped keyhole).

Denise

My husband and I are finishing constructing a hugelbeet in our back yard, but I'm having trouble with the soil that goes on the outside. The bed itself is buried two feet, and is currently nearly 4 feet above ground, with some pretty steep sides. I crammed the nooks and crannies with dead leaves, and now we're shoveling a mix of compost/topsoil on it all. The problem is that the sides are steep enough that the soil just wants to roll right off. I've seen lots of advice about keeping the soil on there by planting immediately, using mulch, etc., but no advice about how to even get the soil on there in the first place. I'm wondering if I'll have to mix up a bunch of mud and just plaster it on there.

Anyone have any advice?

Thanks!

Denise