Home tests are unreliable, so save your money. It's in a container, right? Your best bet, at this point, for feeding would be to get a water soluble all purpose fert like Miracle Gro All Purose(24-8-16) or Foliage Pro (9-3-6). If you go with the MG, you'll still need to supplement with Calcium and Magnesium--- Calmag. Giving weekly doses at half strength is better than full strength every 2 weeks like the label says. Herbicides will stay for quite a while, so stop adding them and you should be ok. It's pretty tough to kill a pepper plant. Good luck. Kevin

The "white" peppers (those that are cream colored when immature) are very high yielders, but hard to ripen. "Alma Paprika" (mentioned earlier in the thread) is one of those, as is "Feyer Ozon". Both are very compact plants that bear heavily. I've also grown several high-yielding European varieties, "Suptol" and "Taltos". The photo below is of a single plant of "Taltos", pulled just before frost & stripped of leaves: With some reservations, I agree with those that recommend "Cubanelle". It has very large peppers (some 7-8" long) and is incredibly high yielding. So high yielding, in fact, that it requires support to keep the peppers from pulling the plant over, and they are packed in so tightly together that it is hard to pick one without damaging others. Rot can be a problem too, and because it starts from the inside, the peppers might appear normal (for a time) until they are cut open. I've been trying to save seed this year, and it has been frustrating to see so many full-grown peppers begin to change color, only to suddenly turn to mush. To get the full benefit of the huge yield, I recommend picking them green. While I have not grown "Carmen" personally, a gardening friend does, and her plants are loaded, with many ripe. "Sweet Chocolate" (not to be confused with "Chocolate Bell") has elongated bell-like peppers. They tolerate cooler weather, the yield per plant can be huge, and they ripen quickly to a brick red/brown. Thinner walls than a bell though, more like a frying pepper. This one too requires support, otherwise the high pod yield will pull the plant over, or break branches. One of my favorites is another European variety, "Elephant Ear". It has conical peppers 6-8" long that resemble the "Giant Marconi" above, but wider at the shoulder & tapering to a point. The walls are as thick as bells, and the average weight this year has been over 5 ounces per pepper. This has not been a great year for peppers here, but about half of the "Elephant Ear" peppers have ripened, and most of the rest are changing color. I am getting about 8-10 peppers per plant. But for fresh eating & great salsa, I like the "cheese" peppers. They are pumpkin shaped, have very thick walls, and ripen earlier than most bells. "Tennessee Cheese" ripens early, and has a pretty good yield of 2 1/2" wide peppers that are deep red when mature. The walls are often over 1/4" thick, and have less juice than most peppers, so they don't turn to mush when chopped... one of my favorites for adding body to canned salsa. "Greygo" is probably the largest cheese pepper, 4" wide X 2" deep, and average 4 ounces or better. This is my favorite ripe pepper, DW & I eat them like apples... delicious. While the OP is about sweet peppers, even some hot peppers can be sweet under some conditions. That is the case for "Pizza Pepper", from Territorial. The plants are loaded with very large jalapeno-like peppers, 3-4" long & up to 2" wide, with walls nearly 1/4" thick. They can be spicy if harvested during warm weather. When it gets cool though, especially close to frost, most of the immature peppers become almost completely sweet, with a very crunchy texture. Harvested under those conditions, this is my favorite pepper for fresh eating, truly gourmet quality. They also have remarkable storage qualities; I keep them in buckets in an unheated garage for a month with few losses, and in the refrigerator for two months. Over the Labor Day weekend, I visited Heritage Farm (SSE's Iowa headquarters) and walked through most of their trials & preservation gardens. The pepper plot was really interesting - it was how I discovered some of the European peppers that I grow in years past. Saw some great prospects for the future, including "Melrose", a frying pepper sold by several companies. The plants were loaded with 5" long X 1.5" wide peppers tapering to a point, very deep red when mature. It was the last days of August, and not only were nearly all of those peppers ripe, they were shriveling & drying on the plant!!! Early, heavy bearing... looks to be worth trying.

Of course you can make it any size you see fit, and using any materials that are easily available to you. Though I think 6 inches wide will probably do, I would opt a little wider 8-12 inches wide. Here's how I planed to build mine. First plywood would be stronger, but OSB board would be cheaper and still strong enough. It runs about $7-$8 for a 8x4 sheet around here. I plan the inside diameter to be 12 inch deep, about 12 inch wide, and 8 feet long. Make it as long as you want also, 8 feet is all I need. Though I plan to build 2, set them parallel with each other about 5-6 feet apart, and place a A-frame trellis between the two trenches. You already have your trellis. To strengthen the box structure, I plan on running 1x2's (they run $0.84 ea here) along the outside for added support. You can use 2x4's but would be about 3-4 times the price, and 1x2's should be enough support. For a trench box that long, I would probably run one horizontal row of 1x2 along the top and bottom of the box. Then periodically place vertical pieces between them. Here in the desert I need to insulate the roots from the heat, you probably wont want to do this part, especially if you are going to have the trench in the ground. My trench is planed to be on top of the ground. The inside of the box will be lined with probably 2 layers of 1/2 inch (or 1 inch) thick Styrofoam sheet insulation. Glued in with PL300 foamboard adhesive (it's made specifically to glue Styrofoam insulation to wood and construction materials. Then I plan to line the inside with vinyl sheeting. I don't know if Low's or Home Depot carry it, but ACE hardware just down the street from me does. They have 3 different thickness that run from about $3-$6 a square yard (in one yard widths). For the inside diameter I plan, it should just fit nicely without even overlapping it (except the end pieces. I plan to use 100% silicone to seal the ends and glue down the vinyl sheeting (as well as all corners and edges after the Styrofoam is glued in). Fish pond liner would be just fine, and plenty durable. I don't know how much it runs, but I think I will look into pricing that as well. For the drain I plan to cut a hole just big enough to run a pvc tube through the wood, and a little smaller than the wood hole in the Styrofoam (for a snug fit). Then glue it to the Styrofoam with the foamboard adhesive. Then run beds of silicone, and screw in a pvc connectors on both sides of the tube and snug it down. Making the lip of the connector on the inside of the box as short as possible (but still durable), so as much water will drain out as possible. I may decide to have more than one of these drains per box. But if one side of the box is raised a little, the water should flow nicely to the side with the drain/s. Because the heat and sun is so bad here on things. I plan to paint the outside of the box with a roofing material. I forget what it's called, but it's white, thick, durable and flexible. They use it on rooftops for reflecting the suns rays (overall cooling the building). That will also add another layer of insulation for the roots for me (reflecting the heat). But I need to find somewhere where they sell it in one gallon buckets. The 5 gallon buckets are way more than I need, and it's not exactly cheep (a one gallon should run about $10-12). That should protect the wood from moisture if you plan to bury it in the ground as well. However there is another material for that also, but it's black. I forget what they call that also, but they use it to protect walls that extend underground so they don't absorb moisture (like basement walls, underground stairways etc.). I don't know how much it runs, but you will want to protect the wood from ground moisture if you place it in the ground. And products like Thompson water seal wear off and need to be reapplied regularly. Once the box is ready, I plan to simply place a section of inexpensive furnace filter screening ($2, I just cut the screening material out of a inexpensive furnace filter) on top of the drain holes. Then I will place a layer of rocks on top of that to about 2 inches deep along the bottom of the trench. This will hold the screening in place and help with drainage all the way through the box. Then just fill with the growing medium and plants, setup the drip system. You should have a very durable planter box that will withstand the weather and you can use year after year. .

Summer, I do agree with Ilene that it is sunscald. The only other thing it possibly could (but doesn't really) resemble is anthracnose, but if that was what it was, you'd see concentric rings with slight color variations. Sometimes sunscald spots do enlarge because as long as the pepper is in the sun, it will continue to burn. I'd pick it and salvage what I could of it, because once you have sunscald, you'll often see bacterial rot develop in the scalded area and then spread to the rest of the pepper. There is no quick or easy fix for sunscald on a current plant. If there is any way you could rig something over the top of the plant (or plants) to partially shade them, that would help. For example, if you have an extra tomato cage, put it over the plant and then use duct tape of clothespins to attach a piece of cloth or even newspaper to the cage. You want to position the sunshade so that the plant gets at least 4 to 5 hours of sun a day. Or, you could make a tripod using three sticks or poles (could be small branches trimmed off a tree, PVC pipe, bamboo, etc. and then attach some sort of material to the tripod so the plant receives shade for part of the day. Sunscald in peppers (and tomatoes too) is very common. Often (but not always) it occurs when a pepper plant loses some of its foliage for some reason. I interplant my pepper plants with tomato plants so the tomatoes can partially shade the peppers. Dawn