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Vegetable Gardening

Pepper plant dropping leaves

14 years ago

Hi;

This year I took a class on natural vegetable gardening, but got a late start. I dug a new small plot and mixed in organic manure and spaghum moss into my otherwise sand soil. I planted 1 banana pepper, 1 jalapeno, and 3 varieties of tomatoes. --all seedlings from Lowe's garden center. Within 2 days, the jalapeno appeared wilted, despite it being watered twice since transplanting. I added Gardentone to each seedling per directions, but by the next day, it started dropping leaves. it died within a week. I purchased a cayenne from home depot and planted it near the same spot, and it is now doing the same thing. I have dug for cutworms, and can find nothing.

The dropped leaves have no other abnormalities. Not yellow, no spots, bites, etc. They almost appear to be pinched off where the stem of the leaf attaches to the stem of the plant, which appears undamaged.

Any help would be appreciated!

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Comment (1)

noinwi
14 years ago
Are you planting them out in full sun? They may have come directly from a greenhouse and full sun may be too harsh at first(they may not have ever been hardened off). Try keeping your new plants in their pots for a few days, gradually letting them get used to sun exposure. Also, most plants go through transplant shock to some degree and take some time to recover(and don't fertilize them until they do). I planted some peppers one year without enough hardening off and they were scalded by the sun. All the leaves dropped off and they were just green sticks in the ground, but eventually they sprouted new leaves and bounced back completely.
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The most likely cause of what shows in your photo is overly wet soil either from over-watering, heavy rains, or poorly draining soil mix. Peppers don't like continuously wet roots and leaf margins curl and brown and it sheds leaves directly at the stem junction when kept overly wet. Plus if it has been especially cool weather lately that makes the problem worse as the soil is still too cool. Usually letting the soil dry substantially and warm up will stop the problem. Weather this year is creating many unusual problems that only delaying planting beyond the norm will resolve. Dave
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Here is a discussion of the same question from earlier in the week. It should answer your question for you. ;) Dave Here is a link that might be useful: Why is pepper plant dropping leaves?
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The Douglah weren't out for very long - like a day while I added potting soil and fertilized them with fish emulsion midsummer - and 1 is fine. Should I just cut the other to stimulate growth? The bihs and serrano were out all summer, that's how they got aphids. I'll just try to keep up with them, thanks. These are in the family room in the south bay window, near the couch and I still got a couple aphids on my hands while I'm sitting here typing this AM so I'm not sure how long it will take to get rid of them. I guess I should move the 2 Douglah to another room so they don't get infested (if they aren't already). We've got tons of ladybugs now - anyone know if the Asiatic (orange) ones eat aphids ;-)? This post was edited by ajsmama on Fri, Oct 17, 14 at 12:01
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