sick peppers

[wally mcgee]

I have always had a hard time growing peppers in my garden in Iowa..zone 5a. Everything else seems to flourish in my soil, but peppers never seem to do very well. I am attaching several pictures of them; 2 sick looking plants in the same bed, and a little bit better looking one in another bed.

I usually use fish emulsion on most of my plants, but these peppers hate it.
The only difference between the two garden beds is the ph of the better looking pepper bed was 6.5 and from the other bed, 7.5. So says my newly bought cheap ph tester. Could that be it? If so how do I correct it.?

All the surrounding plants: broccoli, cabbage, zucchini , and Cherokee Purple tomatoes all look very healthy.

You can see that the pepper on the right looks good compared to the one on the left in the other bed. I should mention that in the bed with the sick peppers are some ground cherries I'm trying this year, and they don't look so hot either.

I'm at a loss.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

[linzelu100]

Are you concerned because the color of the leaves are lighter?

[wally mcgee]

Originally Posted by linzelu100

Are you concerned because the color of the leaves are lighter?

They are lighter and a little droopy. Just not healthy looking. Can't figure out why when everything else does so well.

[FILMNET]

My work with pepper plants are different every year, I grow Pepperdue, some very hot ones last year 1 or 2 plants each. And a great red Hybrid from Marko from Europe, each grows different. But i never had a plant die early.

[b54red]

I usually get a few pepper plants that do something similar to that every year. I have found through hard experience that it is usually better to go ahead and remove it and replace it with a new plant. The reason is that every time I spend the time babying it through it still is a very poor producer through the season and never looks healthy. If you don't need the space you can just leave it and hope it improves; but if space is critical then I would replace it as soon as possible.

Bill

[ddsack]

I agree with Bill. If you start enough peppers, there always seem to be a couple that stay runty and take way long in the season to do much. If it's too late to replace it, all you can do is douse it with extra fertilizer and water and hope for the best.

[Crandrew]

IS it just me or doest that second plant look fine just a bit droopy?

Did you transplant them recently or have they been in ground for a while?

[jack03111969]

on the sick plants I would pull the flowers off and take some of the yellow leafs off as well. then I would switch the kind of fertilizer I use on them. I have done that to a few stunted peppers plants this year and they are starting to pull through with good results.

[wally mcgee]

Originally Posted by jack03111969

on the sick plants I would pull the flowers off and take some of the yellow leafs off as well. then I would switch the kind of fertilizer I use on them. I have done that to a few stunted peppers plants this year and they are starting to pull through with good results.

I have using fish emulsion. What should I try?

[wally mcgee]

Originally Posted by Crandrew

IS it just me or doest that second plant look fine just a bit droopy?

Did you transplant them recently or have they been in ground for a while?

I think the second plant will be ok. I just put up its picture for comparison.

[wally mcgee]

The droopy peppers were a little runty when I put them in. I started them from seed. I'm rather new to starting peppers.

[Crandrew]

ok that makes more sense about the second plant. I find that my sweet peppers drop quite frequently because they get around 8 hrs of direct sun but they are healthy and popping peppers like its christmas. One thing I learned on here was to not over analyze every symptom and let it play out a bit more. I find peppers to be very very low maintenance but maybe I've just been fortunate.
Fish emulsion is normally not an issue. How often are you using it? Perhaps just hold off feeding them for a week or two and see what happens. I only feed my plants maybe 1 or twice a season.

[wally mcgee]

As an experiment I tried some UpStart , that you normally use when putting out new plants. Anyway, a few days later and it seems to be greening up and looking much healthier. I don't know if that's what did it or not, but the untreated peppers were unchanged, so tonight I gave the others a dose. Time will tell.

I do have a tendency to over analyse things. Thank you all for your input.

[Northcoast99]

I live zone 5 and usually struggle w/peppers if the weather is cool. This year its been rain/cold(under 6o) at night and the peppers stay yellow and small. Once the weather warms, they start growing and greening up.
Last year was our hottest/dryest year ever and my peppers were huge bumper crop.

[wally mcgee]

Thank you for your response. I just starting adding peppers to my mix this year, so I'm rather new to the ins and outs of growing them.

Thanks

Rob