Gadenin日本語Get the appA long season means a long exposure
The fiercest chillies carry their fruit for far longer than a sweet pepper does, and a pod that sits on the plant for two months while it colors is a pod exposed to two months of weather, insects and fungi. That is the single fact behind most losses on these types. Small, frequent inspections are worth much more than a heavy response later.
Twice a week, turn over a few leaves at the growing tips and look at the shoulders of the oldest pods. Two minutes finds nearly everything at the stage where it is still easy.
| Stage | What tends to appear | Where to look |
|---|---|---|
| Indoors, midwinter seedlings | Fungus gnats, damping off, aphids | Compost surface and stem base |
| Potting up, indoors | Whitefly, red spider mite | Leaf undersides, under the light |
| Just planted out | Slugs, cutworms, wind scorch | Stem at soil level, early morning |
| Hot dry weeks | Red spider mite, thrips | Leaf undersides, inside open flowers |
| Flowering | Buds dropping unopened | Count the fallen buds under the plant |
| Long ripening period | Anthracnose, sunscald, caterpillars | Pod shoulders and the sunny side |
Indoor months count. A plant raised under lights from midwinter spends four months in exactly the warm, still, dry conditions that mites and whitefly want, and infestations that start there travel outside with the plant.
The sap suckers
Aphids, red spider mite, thrips and whitefly cause most of the pest damage, and all four breed fastest in warm still air. Their feeding is a nuisance; the viruses they carry are the real cost, because a virused chilli never comes right and has to be pulled.
| Pest | How it shows | Response |
|---|---|---|
| Aphids | Clusters at the growing tips, sticky leaves, ants running the stems | Blast off with water every three days; soap spray if it persists |
| Red spider mite | Fine pale speckling, faint webbing in the leaf joints | Raise humidity, spray the undersides, strip the worst leaves |
| Thrips | Silvered patches, black specks, twisted new growth | Blue sticky traps, remove affected flowers, reflective mulch |
| Whitefly | A white cloud rising when the plant is knocked | Yellow sticky traps, wash undersides, thin dense growth |
| Caterpillars | Shoots stripped overnight, dark droppings on leaves below | Hand pick in the evening, looking on the stem above the droppings |
| Fungus gnats | Small dark flies over indoor compost | Let the surface dry between waterings, cover with grit |
Pull and burn a plant with mottled, puckered leaves and a stunted growing point once you have ruled out feeding faults. Virus does not respond to anything, and the aphids move it to the neighboring plants while you wait to see.
Rots get in through wet skins and small wounds
Anthracnose is the main one, and it hits ripening pods hardest, which is exactly the stage a hot chilli spends months in. It shows as sunken dark circular spots that spread and often carry pink or orange spore masses in the center. Once a pod has it, that pod is finished; the job is to stop it moving through the plant.
Take affected pods off the moment you see them and take them off the plot, never onto the compost pile. Then change the conditions that let it in: water at the base rather than over the leaves, open a congested center so the plant dries quickly after rain, and pick pods promptly instead of leaving fully colored fruit hanging through wet weather because you have not got round to it.
The faults that are not pests
Perhaps half of what gets reported as a chilli disease is actually weather, water or feed. Reaching for a spray in those cases wastes weeks of a season that these slow types cannot spare.
| Symptom | Cause | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Buds fall unopened | Above 90F (32C) by day or below 55F (13C) at night | Shade in heat, row cover in cold; setting resumes on its own |
| Pale sunken leathery patch on the sunny side of a pod | Sunscald on fruit left exposed | Keep the leaf canopy, shade during a heatwave |
| Dark soft patch at the tip of the pod | Uneven watering, not a calcium shortage | Water steadily and mulch the root zone |
| Very dark curled leaves, no fruit | Excess nitrogen | Stop all feed for three weeks |
| Purple leaves, growth stalled | Roots too cold | Wait for warmth; the color fades by itself |
| Pods split lengthwise as they ripen | A heavy soak after a dry spell | Even watering, and pick at first full color |
| Pods stay green into autumn | Sown too late for the type | Strip late flowers, protect at night, sow earlier next year |
Prevention is decided before the plant goes out
Rotate away from tomatoes, potatoes and aubergines for three years. Space the plants at their full size rather than their planting size, so air moves between them in high summer. Mulch to stop soil splashing up onto the lowest leaves, and water at the base. None of these four can be applied retrospectively in the middle of a wet midsummer spell, and together they remove the conditions most of these problems depend on.
At the end of the year, clear the plants and every fallen pod rather than digging the debris in. Anthracnose and several leaf spots overwinter on that material and infect next year's plants from the ground up.
Record what appeared, where and when
Note the date you first saw each problem, which plant it was on and where that plant stood. Pests turn up in very nearly the same week each year in the same garden, and after two seasons your own notes will tell you when to start looking. That is worth more than any general advice, because it is calibrated to your site.