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Chilli troubles arrive in a fairly reliable order through the season, and almost all of them are easy to deal with in the first week and hard after a month. Two minutes twice a week, turning over a few leaves at the growing tips, finds nearly everything worth finding.
| Stage | Watch for | Where to look |
|---|---|---|
| Seedlings and young plants | Aphids, fungus gnats, damping off | Growing tips, compost surface, stem base |
| Establishment | Cutworms, slugs, wind damage | Stem at soil level, first thing in the morning |
| Hot dry spells | Red spider mite, thrips | Leaf undersides, inside open flowers |
| Flowering | Flower drop, poor set | Count the flowers falling unopened |
| Ripening | Fruit rots, sunscald, hornworms | Pod shoulders, the sunny side, stripped shoots |
Carry a hand lens. Mites and thrips are decided at that scale, and guessing between them leads to the wrong treatment and a fortnight lost.
Sap suckers do the most damage
Aphids, red spider mite and thrips account for most chilli pest problems, and all three build up fastest in warm, still, dry conditions. They also spread viruses, which matters more than the feeding damage itself.
| Pest | How you spot it | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Aphids | Clusters on growing tips, sticky leaves, ants | Wash off with water, repeat every three days; soap spray if it persists |
| Red spider mite | Fine pale stippling, faint webbing at leaf joints | Raise the humidity, spray undersides, remove the worst leaves |
| Thrips | Silvered patches, black specks, distorted new growth | Reflective mulch, blue sticky traps, remove affected flowers |
| Whitefly | A cloud of small white insects when disturbed | Yellow sticky traps, wash undersides, thin dense growth |
| Hornworms and caterpillars | Whole shoots stripped overnight, dark droppings | Hand pick in the evening; look directly above the droppings |
Look for the droppings first when a shoot has been stripped. The caterpillar is nearly always on the stem straight above them, and it is much easier to find that way than by scanning the leaves.
Most rots start with water on the fruit
Anthracnose and the soft rots that follow it get in through wet pod surfaces and small wounds, and they run through a crowded plant quickly. Sunken dark spots on a ripening pod, sometimes with pink or orange spore masses in the middle, is the classic sign.
There is nothing to be done for an affected pod. Take it off and remove it from the plot, do not compost it, and then deal with the conditions: water at the base rather than overhead, open the middle of the plant so it dries after rain, and pick ripe pods promptly rather than leaving them out in wet weather.
The faults that are not pests at all
A good half of what gets reported as chilli disease is a watering, feeding or weather problem. Treating those with a spray wastes the season.
| Symptom | Cause | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Flowers drop without setting | Above 90F (32C) by day or below 55F (13C) at night | Shade in heat, cover in cold; it resumes on its own |
| Sunken pale leathery patch on the pod | Sunscald on exposed fruit | Keep leaf cover, do not over strip; shade in a heatwave |
| Soft dark patch at the pod tip | Blossom end rot from uneven watering | Water steadily and mulch; calcium is rarely the shortage |
| Leaves dark green, curled, no flowers | Too much nitrogen | Stop feeding for two to three weeks |
| Leaves purple, growth stalled | Cold soil early in the season | Wait for warmth; the color goes on its own |
| Pods split as they ripen | Heavy watering after a dry spell | Even watering; pick just before full color |
Prevention that is decided before planting
Rotate away from other nightshades for three years, space the plants so air moves between them at full size, mulch to stop soil splashing onto the leaves, and water at the base. Those four decisions remove the conditions most of these problems need, and none of them can be applied retrospectively once the plants are cropping in the heat of summer.
Clear the plants and the fallen pods at the end of the season rather than digging them in. Anthracnose and several of the leaf spots overwinter on the debris and start next year's plants off infected.
Keep a note of what appeared and when
Write down the date you first saw each problem, which plants it was on and where they stood. Pests arrive at very nearly the same point each year in the same garden, and after two seasons your own notes tell you the week to start looking, which is worth more than any general calendar.