Piegirls pepper disease

[PaulF]

Piegirl asked me to post this photo of her cuke problem to see if anyone can ID. She will answer this post with more details.

[rnewste]

That sure looks like a picture of a PEPPER Plant - - not a cuke!!

Raybo

[PaulF]

OOOPS....make that Piegirl's pepper disease. It's late after a full day of tasting tomatoes. Sorry Denise.

[RayR]

It's a leaf curl virus, I have one bell pepper plant that has it too. There are a number of leaf curl viruses that can affect pepper plants, so I don't have a clue which one it is.
In my case it doesn't seem to be transmittable between plants since there is another pepper plant in the same container as the infected one and that one is growing normally. No other plants in the garden have any similar symptoms.
I think mine was seed born since that plant had distorted leaves even when it was a seedling.
The plant produced one pepper but is stunted. I'm going to pull it, but I'll take a picture of it first and post it here.

[RayR]

His a few pictures of my infected plant. It's stunted at about 1ft. tall
In the second picture you can see the other bell pepper plant in the container is growing normally.

[sheysd1]

Hmmmm. I have one that looks like that too.

[roper2008]

One thing I noticed about my peppers this year is about half
of them got funny leaf curl/distorted leaves. Mostly my hot
peppers, but some of the regular too. All but one grew out
of it and produced nicelly. I don't think there much she can
do about it. I would wait it out and see if it recovers. If it
doesn't produce any nice peppers, then pull it out.

[roper2008]

This is the leaf curl I had.

[RayR]

Originally Posted by roper2008

One thing I noticed about my peppers this year is about half
of them got funny leaf curl/distorted leaves. Mostly my hot
peppers, but some of the regular too. All but one grew out
of it and produced nicelly. I don't think there much she can
do about it. I would wait it out and see if it recovers. If it
doesn't produce any nice peppers, then pull it out.

I've noticed that on some hot pepper varieties too, like Serrano, but they grow normally and produce a lot of peppers. This bell pepper plant produced only one purple bell pepper, which I already picked and hasn't flowered or grown an inch since. At last count the plant next to it had set 8 peppers and has more new flowers. The seeds came from the same package which was one of those colored heirloom bell pepper grab bags.

[piegirl]

Thanks Paul for posting the photo. The variety is Big Bertha and so far it has only affected the middle plant. I think in uppper right you can see ivory mottling on the leaves. Tons of flowers and they seem to be setting. She is still hanging in there even with high temps and humidity the past couple of days. It did seem to appear almost overnight, no signs of insects. What a quirky year in this area for gardening. piegirl

[b54red]

I get that stuff every year on some of my peppers but this year has been the worst in a long time. Sometimes a plant will grow out of it if it isn't too hot and humid but if the temps stay really high then they never seem to do much. The plants also get really ugly as it progresses and if they do make any peppers they are usually small and disfigured. I keep my plants sprayed but it never seems to matter with this disease so I'm inclined to think it is seed born or soil born.

[RayR]

There is no cure for viral pathogens, from what information I have been able to find the same virus's can infect other plants also, not just peppers. They can be seed born, soil born and some are transmitted by insects.

[piegirl]

A quick check today and the plant has set 4-5 more little peppers. Time will tell if they grow into regular size Big Berthas. Plants on either are fine. Piegirl