Had excellent results using this D E, but now of course this is important (you don't want to make dust fly and breath this stuff in) as it wouldn't be good for your lungs. I've used it around young corn plants that Cut Worms love to snip off at close to ground level. Now, once the corn plants get to around 3 inches tall then the cut worms can't get through the tougher stalks at this point, just birds want to pluck em next. As with respect to the Green Pepper plants you'll just have to keep using it and the slugs get cut up crawling through the Diatomaceous Earth, this stops them very well so they don't crawl up the plants an do all the damage. Here's a link to article about D E. http://www.ghorganics.com/DiatomaceousEarth.html Here is a link that might be useful: Diatomaceous Earth

Hard to tell from the photo, but those might be aphid skin sheds. I know aphids might be a long shot since it looks like the plant is outside. Natural predators usually take care of aphids once I set my plants out. You could spray with an insecticidal soap (I use Safer brand), but I wouldn't do that until I know for sure what I'm dealing with. Look closely and see if you can find anything crawling around. That will make identifying and treating them much easier. Good Luck. Rick

habjolokia, thanks for getting back to me. I usually water in the late afternoon. The major leaf drop seemed to happen to healthy leaves. I also had the stem of a salvia flower fall off at the same time, looked like it was broken off by a person because the rest of the plant seems so healthy. The plants are on a 4th floor balcony so I don't think any person or animals would have done this, except possibly a small bird. Is it harmful to increase my use in insecticidal soap to nearly every day? I don't see many insects anymore except an aphid or two on each plant, but something is doing damage. I did see a couple of leaves out of 13 plants that looked like they were chewed up by insects for the first time yesterday... I just don't see the insects that could be doing this. Some small white spots about the size of the clear spot pictured have shown up on some plants over the last day or two. These plants have been outside since early April. They had transplant shock (wilting) at first but got over it, and they looked healthy until the last couple of weeks, despite the aphid problem peaking in early May. I have Epsom salts, as well a bone meal/probiotic/fertilizer mix I could use if you recommend it. I was holding off on using those in case the problem was too much fertilizer.

Yes, they can sunburn, if you don't easy them out into the sunlight for a few days. They'll outgrow it. They look like they could use some nitrogen. All the books all seem to tell you that too much nitrogen will reult in all leaves and no fruit, I've never had that happen and I have a heavy hand with tomato fertilizer. I like to push them hard to make as much top growth as possible before they start setting fruit.