Hey, Owen. I don't know if you'll see this, but I think I have a guess as to why your plants aren't fruiting.... first of all, are they flowering? If not, there might be some other issue. But if they are....the flowers need to be pollinated before they'll make fruit. If the plants spend all their time indoors, away from pollinators, you'll need to do the pollinating yourself. I don't quite know how you'd do that...in biology class they had us use a small paintbrush and spread pollen between flowers, but I don't know how well it'd work. Can you put the plants outside in the summer, so that some bees might come by and help you out? Best, Lara

Looking real nice, always exciting to see the first peppers. I have some on my habanero just as tiny. Mark

Thanks for the reply and that may be right, I don't recall getting them wet but something could have splashed on them, it did seem to happen after they were set out in full sun for the day unintentionally... ie it went from overcast to full sun while I was at work and my peppers were exposed.

You would think with our 4-10% humidity all summer long, the only problem I’d not have is mold. I don’t know what else it could be though - and I’ve now seen it on about 4-5 of the plants. It’s always just on a portion of the stem, and I’ve left it there after a couple times of rubbing it off with rubbing alcohol. But it does seem to have started after I started afternoon watering. But with our ridiculous temps being in the 100-114 range already (and it’s not even our hottest months!!), watering late seems to keep them most prepared for the next day’s onslaught of heat and endless sun. Or maybe I’m imagining it. That was a Sinahuisa, I believe, because I remember thinking it’s good that it happened on that one because I have a much slower seedling that I put aside, which I could grow out of this succumbed to whatever this white stuff is. I only have two pepper plants where I grew out more than one. That said, so far, it doesn’t seem to spread up or down the stem any further and when removed, there’s no scarring or any noticeable damage. No sign of mealies or anything else alive. Now I just leave it there on the plants that have it. I have bigger fish to fry as shown below. Five of these have mowed down three plants overnight. I could scream. Actually, I did scream. Haha.