Gadenin日本語Get the appAphids are the main pest, and the bush hides them
This type makes a dense, twiggy bush with a great many growing tips, and every one of those tips is a place for aphids to build. On an open blocky pepper you see them coming; here the colony is well established in the middle of the plant before anything shows on the outside.
The early signs are sticky leaves that glisten in low sun, ants running up the main stem, and new growth at the tips that is curled and puckered. By the time you can see the insects from three feet away you have lost a fortnight. Turn leaves over and look into the center of the bush twice a week from the moment the plant starts branching.
| Pest | How you notice it | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Aphids | Sticky leaves, ants, curled growing tips | Wash off with water; repeat every few days until clear |
| Whitefly | A cloud of small white insects when you brush past | Yellow sticky traps; keep the plant unstressed |
| Thrips | Silver streaking on leaves, distorted new growth | Check inside the flowers; reflective mulch helps |
| Spider mites | Fine pale speckling, webbing under leaves in heat | Spray leaf undersides with water; they love dry dusty plants |
| Caterpillars and borers | A neat hole in a pod, pods dropping early | Pick up every dropped pod and remove it from the plot |
| Cutworms | Young plant cut through at soil level overnight | A card collar around the stem at planting |
Aphids matter far more for the viruses they carry than for the sap they take. A plant whose new leaves come through narrow, mottled and puckered and never come right is virused, and the only answer is to pull it out.
Flower drop is weather, not disease
A plant covered in flowers that fall off at the joint without setting is not sick and is not short of anything you can buy. Pepper pollen fails above about 90F (32C) in the day, and it fails when nights stay above 75F (24C) because the flower never cools down. At the other end, nights below 55F (13C) stop the pollen shedding at all.
This type usually rides the midsummer gap better than a thick-walled pepper, because it sets so freely that even a poor week produces something, and it comes back into full production within about two weeks of the weather breaking. The job during the gap is not to force a set, which you cannot do, but to keep the plant fed, watered and free of aphids so it is ready when conditions return.
| Condition | What you see | What helps |
|---|---|---|
| Days above 90F (32C) | Flowers drop, no pods set | 30 percent shade cloth, mulch, steady water |
| Nights above 75F (24C) | Drop even when days are reasonable | Airflow and shade; mostly you wait it out |
| Nights below 55F (13C) | Poor set early in the season | Row cover at night until the nights lift |
| Soil dry during flowering | Drop plus short misshapen pods | Water before the plant wilts, not after |
| Too much nitrogen | Lush dark growth, few flowers | Switch to a potassium weighted feed |
Tapping the canes gently mid morning helps set in still, humid conditions, since these flowers are self fertile and only need the pollen shaken loose. It does nothing when the cause is heat, because there is no viable pollen there to shake.
Pod problems that are not disease
Most of what spoils individual pods on this crop is physiological, driven by water and sun rather than by an organism. Recognizing these saves you spraying for something that is not there.
| What you see | Cause | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Sunken leathery brown patch at the tip | Blossom end rot from uneven water | Mulch, water steadily, cut back nitrogen |
| Papery white patch on the sunny side | Sunscald on an exposed pod | Keep leaf cover; do not strip leaves in summer |
| Tough creased skin, dull surface | The pod was left on too long, or dried out | Pick younger and water more evenly |
| Short, curled, lopsided pods | Poor pollination in heat or cold | Nothing to fix; the next set will be normal |
| Soft wet rot at the stalk end | Fungal rot entering damaged tissue | Remove the pod, improve airflow, do not compost it |
| Pods dropping while still small | Heat stress, drought, or a borer inside | Cut one open and look before assuming weather |
The pod that comes out unexpectedly hot
Every so often a plant of this type hands you a pod with a real bite to it, in the middle of a crop that is otherwise completely mild. It is the single most searched question about growing this pepper, and the answer is stress rather than anything wrong with the plant.
A long dry spell, a stretch of hard heat, a pot that was allowed to go bone dry, or a plant carrying more pods than it can supply all push it. The pods most likely to bite are the ones that grew through the worst week and the ones that were left on longest. There is no way to tell by looking, so if the plant has had a hard week, taste a small raw sliver before serving a whole dish to other people.
The control is water. A plant that has never been allowed to dry out hard almost never produces a hot pod, and a plant in a small container in a heatwave will do it repeatedly.
Diseases, and when to give up on a plant
Peppers get off comparatively lightly for leaf disease, but when a soil-borne wilt arrives no spray reaches it. Knowing which problems are treatable and which are terminal saves weeks of pointless effort and stops one plant infecting the row.
| Symptom | Suspect | The call |
|---|---|---|
| Sudden wilt, stem dark at soil level | Root and crown rot | Pull it; improve drainage, do not replant nightshades there |
| Yellowing starting on one side of the plant | Wilt disease in the soil | Pull it before it spreads; rotate next year |
| Small dark leaf spots with pale centers | Bacterial leaf spot | Remove the worst leaves, water at the base, do not save seed |
| Sunken circular lesions on ripening pods | Anthracnose | Pick affected pods off and take them off the plot |
| Narrow mottled puckered new leaves | Virus, carried by aphids or thrips | Pull the plant; there is no treatment |
| White powdery patches on leaf undersides | Powdery mildew | Thin the inner branches for airflow; keep picking |
Do not stack pulled plants at the edge of the plot or dig them in. Put them in household waste or burn them, and wash hands and snips before touching a healthy plant.
Prevention, and the notes worth keeping
Rotate at least three years away from peppers, tomatoes, aubergines and potatoes. Space the plants 18 to 24 inches (45 to 60 cm) apart so air moves through what becomes a very dense bush. Mulch two inches (5 cm) deep, water at the base in the morning, and thin a few inner branches in late summer.
Then write things down. Record the date you first saw aphids, the week flower drop started and stopped, the position of any plant you pulled and what it looked like, and any week you found hot pods. Two seasons of that and you will know your own garden's midsummer gap to within a week, and you will put the shade cloth up before the flowers fall rather than after.