Well first of all, 1.5 foot tall peppers are much too large to be transplanted, in my opinion. Bigger is not always better when it comes to transplants. The bigger the transplant, the more stress it undergoes when it's roots are disturbed. That's why they took a while to start growing and were having issues from the get go. Second, the reason they continue to have issues is because of your watering. Peppers don't need watered 2-3 times a week, especially when they are mulched. You're probably drowning them. Deep, infrequent watering is best. Once a week should be sufficient. Check down a few inches in the soil and see if it's moist before watering. If it's moist, wait a day or two. If it's dry, water. If you correct your watering practices your peppers should survive. 5-6 hours of sun a day is less than optimum but it should be enough. And they might need some fertilizer. Rodney Edited to add link to the OP's tomato thread. Here is a link that might be useful: Tomato plants' leaves curling. How much sunlight needed? This post was edited by theforgottenone1013 on Thu, Jul 10, 14 at 22:56

It looks like a European plum that had too much heat this year. My Euro plums also look pretty ragged now, it was a rough August for them. Do watch it next year for signs of disease, there may have been some problem earlier. I had aphid problems which helped make my Euro plums ragged this year. Scott

Hi, Linda - what is meant by "I have added stones so I am thinking the roots not showing is the problem, I scooped out excess dirt, hopefully this is the cure"? Something is amiss, but with more info from you, we can probably figure out what it is. Adding "stones" to the bottom of a pot might or might not be a bad idea. If the grow medium you're using supports a layer of 100% saturated soil that defies gravity by refusing to exit the pot (a perched water column/ table), stones used as ballast can be your plant's best friend, because the stones displace a volume of medium which would otherwise be saturated with water; however, stones used as a drainage layer serve only to elevate the perched water table's position in the pot. These pots are full of grow medium and the shaded part represents a perched water table (PWT). The maximum ht of the PWT in any given medium that supports PW is a constant, no matter the size or shape of the pot. In the case above, the PWT is 3" tall, and you can see it remains so in all 3 pots. In the middle pot, the water "perches" (like a bird on a wire) just above a 2" drainage layer of small stones, making the distance from the pot bottom to the top of the PWT 5" instead of 3". So this would be one of those EUREKA moments when you might be discovering you've shot yourself in the foot. Large stones would be no different than bricks or empty soda bottles (caps on) and would be considered as ballast as opposed to a drainage layer. Remembering that the ht of a PWT is a constant for a given medium, adding stones as ballast does not raise the ht of the PWT. It simply displaces a fraction of the medium equal to the volume of the item used as ballast, reducing the volume of soil capable of holding perched water. With a bit of planning, ballast can eliminate more than 90% of the medium capable of holding PW. It acts passively and only needs to be done once. In figure D below, an over-turned pot is employed as ballast, and my guess is it would eliminate about 80% of the medium capable of holding perched water in this example. But, back to the original issue. How long have you tended the plant? What do you do insofar as a fertilizer program? Have you ever repotted (includes bare-rooting, root pruning, and a change of soil) or potted up (to a slightly larger pot)? I would suggest you ditch the "moisture meter", which isn't very accurate at all, as it measures electrical conductivity, not moisture. Clean the probe and insert it into a cup of distilled water and watch it read "DRY". Using a wooden "tell" to "tell" you when it's time to water does a much better job. Using a 'tell' Over-watering saps vitality and is one of the most common plant assassins, so learning to avoid it is worth the small effort. Plants make and store their own energy source – photosynthate - (sugar/glucose). Functioning roots need energy to drive their metabolic processes, and in order to get it, they use oxygen to burn (oxidize) their food. From this, we can see that terrestrial plants need plenty of air (oxygen) in the soil to drive root function. Many off-the-shelf soils hold too much water and not enough air to support the kind of root health most growers would like to see; and, a healthy root system is a prerequisite to a healthy plant. Watering in small sips leads to avoid over-watering leads to a residual build-up of dissolved solids (salts) in the soil from tapwater and fertilizer solutions, which limits a plant's ability to absorb water – so watering in sips simply moves us to the other horn of a dilemma. It creates another problem that requires resolution. Better, would be to simply adopt a soil that drains well enough to allow watering to beyond the saturation point, so we're flushing the soil of accumulating dissolved solids whenever we water; this, w/o the plant being forced to pay a tax in the form of reduced vitality, due to prolong periods of soil saturation. Sometimes, though, that's not a course we can immediately steer, which makes controlling how often we water a very important factor. In many cases, we can judge whether or not a planting needs watering by hefting the pot. This is especially true if the pot is made from light material, like plastic, but doesn't work (as) well when the pot is made from heavier material, like clay, or when the size/weight of the pot precludes grabbing it with one hand to judge its weight and gauge the need for water. Fingers stuck an inch or two into the soil work ok for shallow pots, but not for deep pots. Deep pots might have 3 or more inches of soil that feels totally dry, while the lower several inches of the soil is 100% saturated. Obviously, the lack of oxygen in the root zone situation can wreak havoc with root health and cause the loss of a very notable measure of your plant's potential. Inexpensive watering meters don't even measure moisture levels, they measure electrical conductivity. Clean the tip and insert it into a cup of distilled water and witness the fact it reads 'DRY'. One of the most reliable methods of checking a planting's need for water is using a 'tell'. You can use a bamboo skewer in a pinch, but a wooden dowel rod of about 5/16” (75-85mm) would work better. They usually come 48” (120cm) long and can usually be cut in half and serve as a pair. Sharpen all 4 ends in a pencil sharpener and slightly blunt the tip so it's about the diameter of the head on a straight pin. Push the wooden tell deep into the soil. Don't worry, it won't harm the root system. If the plant is quite root-bound, you might need to try several places until you find one where you can push it all the way to the pot's bottom. Leave it a few seconds, then withdraw it and inspect the tip for moisture. For most plantings, withhold water until the tell comes out dry or nearly so. If you see signs of wilting, adjust the interval between waterings so drought stress isn't a recurring issue. Al

You're right, the Plant Tone doesn't have any iron. I just realized that today at a garden center. Don't worry about sounding critical, I'm happy to get the input. I started using the Plant Tone after using a number of Espoma products on someone's yard. They all seemed to work better, last longer, and have less chance of burning than other fertilizers. What I really like is that it's an inoculated soil full of healthy bacteria, and I don't want the soil in potted plants to just be dead soil. It ought to live a little. A lot of the nutrients in Espoma products have to actually break down to become available for the plant, which is good because it helps to feed it steadily over time. I know a number of small garden centers that swear by their products, especially in NY where phosphorous fertilizers are legally controlled, and a lot of the Scott's line of products which are more popular have it and just aren't sold by many places. I picked up an iron and nitrogen rich liquid fertilizer today. It's due for a feed anyway, and i should do it before winter. It's not by any means ideal for citrus, but it's hard to find anything suited for citrus up here. I've heard of a lot of people using Miracid on lemons planted outdoors. All I can find is a powdered container that's meant to plug into a sprayer. Has anyone ever diluted these for container plants? I'm not sure what ratio of powder to water I should use for that. I'm convinced though that this might just be because I've had it pulled 3 feet back from the window for the last 2-3 weeks. It's getting light, but maybe because of how the light comes in at an angle (it's in the SW corner of the window) the reduction in light was enough to hurt it. Here are some photos. The six leaves are mostly all ones that fell off when I shook it to check for loose leaves. The last and second to last one on the right had fallen on their own accord several days earlier, which is why they're more yellowed and drier. Also, notice the little myers and kumquat next to the tree. Sorry about some of the bad lighting and glare, I took these in a bit of a rush this morning. [URL=http://s204.photobucket.com/albums/bb274/eapellow/Lemon%20Tree%20-%20Suffering%20Leaf%20Drop/?action=view&current=Lemon_1.jpg][IMG]http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb274/eapellow/Lemon%20Tree%20-%20Suffering%20Leaf%20Drop/th_Lemon_1.jpg[/IMG][/URL] [URL=http://s204.photobucket.com/albums/bb274/eapellow/Lemon%20Tree%20-%20Suffering%20Leaf%20Drop/?action=view&current=Lemon_2.jpg][IMG]http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb274/eapellow/Lemon%20Tree%20-%20Suffering%20Leaf%20Drop/th_Lemon_2.jpg[/IMG][/URL] [URL=http://s204.photobucket.com/albums/bb274/eapellow/Lemon%20Tree%20-%20Suffering%20Leaf%20Drop/?action=view&current=Lemon_3.jpg][IMG]http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb274/eapellow/Lemon%20Tree%20-%20Suffering%20Leaf%20Drop/th_Lemon_3.jpg[/IMG][/URL] [URL=http://s204.photobucket.com/albums/bb274/eapellow/Lemon%20Tree%20-%20Suffering%20Leaf%20Drop/?action=view&current=Lemon_4.jpg][IMG]http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb274/eapellow/Lemon%20Tree%20-%20Suffering%20Leaf%20Drop/th_Lemon_4.jpg[/IMG][/URL] [URL=http://s204.photobucket.com/albums/bb274/eapellow/Lemon%20Tree%20-%20Suffering%20Leaf%20Drop/?action=view&current=Lemon_5.jpg][IMG]http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb274/eapellow/Lemon%20Tree%20-%20Suffering%20Leaf%20Drop/th_Lemon_5.jpg[/IMG][/URL]