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I feel as if every single plant I am growing has gone wrong!

My peppers were doing really well. My chilli pepper plant is about 5' tall and has 7 peppers growing on it, but the leaves have now developed blotchy yellow patches and two have fallen off. I thought it could be pepper mildew, but there is no sign of it on the underside of the leaves.

My bell pepper plant is about 4' tall, has very large leaves, is just blossoming, but also has the same yellow patches.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Fiona.

Hello Fiona,

Which leaves are falling off? I would be more concerned about leaves yellowing and falling off towards the top of the plant. It’s quite normal for the odd lower leaf to fall off every now and again. Are these plants growing on the balcony as before? Are they protected at night, I just wonder if it may be a little cold at night for them. If the leaves are yellowing and falling, the most likely cause is over-watering, is that a possibility? Are the roots sitting in saucers of water? The watering has to be spot-on, remembering that the water is also a transportation source for the vital nutrients from the compost. if you under-water the plants will consequently be underfed. How often are the plants fed? I would feed them every week with tomato food. Give me a bit more information and I might be able to offer more advice.

Regards, George.

Hi George,

Thanks as usual for your reply.

I gave my peppers some fertilizer this morning as I haven't been doing this (I didn't like to do it until they started to fruit, although my chilli has, my bell pepper hasn't yet).

With the current weather, I have left the windows open on my enclosed balcony (the enclosed balcony is off my bedroom, so my room has been too hot otherwise).

I don't think the plants are over or under watered. I did notice today that if I rubbed the leaves, a coppery dust came off on my finger (on both the bell pepper and the chilli pepper), although this dust is not visible on the plant. That was on the topside of the bell pepper and now I can't remember if was on the topside, underside, or both sides of the chilli pepper leaves.

The leaves that have had the yellow patches the longest (some leaves on the chilli pepper just have lots of little yellow dots rather than blotches) tend also to develop some brown dry-looking patches. One shoot of the chilli pepper has two leaves completely shrivelled at the top of it. I am not sure if that is related to the yellow blotches or whether it is something completely different. The yellow discolouration is becoming more and more prominent on both pepper plants (ie, is appearing on more and more leaves), but apart from those couple of shrivelled leaves and another that fell off out of nowhere on the chilli plant, both plants looks OK.

Some leaves also look as if they have little black specks of compost or something on the underside (they don't look attached to the leaves, but I haven't actually touched these). It could just be compost!

I hope this helps. I have just realised that I can post a picture! I will see whether I can get you a picture of it. I wish I had noticed that earlier!

Fiona

http://homepages.ed.ac.uk/ejua35/chilliyellowleaf.JPG

This should be a link to a picture of the chilli plant. I couldn't get the whole .jpg file to transfer, but you can see some of the yellow leaves and at the back the leaves that appear to be dying.

I hope this helps.

Fiona.