Hey all - Georgeiii - I hate to tell you but you are wrong on this matter. I want all advice but I DO NOT have insects. I have two Cayenne beside these Jalapeno peppers (running on the same resevior) and they are doing fine. I have checked and rechecked for insects but the underside and topside of my leaves are perfect. I also run a fan continuously for many reasons. The dryness you mention is only a surface thing. If you look at the roots picture, it is very moist where it counts. Anyway, for those still following and interested, I flushed the system last night and moved the injector out away from the root zone on one of the two plants. While it is early, I do believe I saw hints of improvements when compared to the one I did not move. I moved the other one tonight and will report back for everyones benefit. I also spoke in length with Botanicare today and they were extremely helpful. They had three suggestions. 1. Gradually bump up the ppm to 900 - 1000 - trace elements can be lacking in qty when a plant is blooming and peppers take some extra boost during this phase. 2. Stop messing with the pH and let it float more. The plant could be trying to grab nutes at differing pH ranges and I keep forcing it up or down. They also said that continual pH adjustment can affect the nute mixtures potentecy and cause lockout. 3. Move the emitters back away from the root zone slightly and try to find the sweet spot of time on and off. # 3 really aligns with what lucas and urban have been saying and it may be working. The final solution will be coming as soon as I have it. The plants are blooming like crazy so they can't be all that unhealthy. Thanks to all for the continued support and advice as I work through this issue.

thismembername, these plants are clearly over fertilized. They are too young to be suffering from under fertilization plus you stated you do fertilize them. Upward leaf curl with very dark leaves is classic of over fertilization (yes I know that black cuban is suposed to have dark leaves but these are too dark). I would suggest removing the plant from the soil and soaking the roots in water until clean. Then re-potting and give it a little liquid calcium since calcium is not a nutrient that can move around in a plants like nitrogen and many others. Eric

William, Because soil friability and drainage varies, and because water percolates down into the soil and evaporates from the soil at different rates, no one can tell you how to water on a 'schedule'. Every one of us on this forum probably has to water our gardens at different rates and for different time frames because our soil and our weather varies. All I can tell you is to keep the soil evenly moist. My peppers get one good soaking weekly from a soaker hose and I water them until the soil is moist about 6" down. How long that takes will vary depending on how dry the soil was when I started, etc. My peppers are in heavy red clay that has been very heavily amended for 10 years with lots of organic material, so it is fairly ideal soil in that it holds moisture pretty well but also drains well because it is a raised bed. I would put all the peppers in the same bed because they do have similar fertility and water needs. Last year was just your 'lucky' year and either the aphids didn't find your plants, or you had 'clean' aphids that hadn't picked up any diseases yet to vector, or your pepper plants had great disease-resistance. This year, your luck ran out. If crookneck squash are falling off, that usually means pollination failed to occur, which is puzzling since the zucchni are pollinating just fine. However, there are a couple of other things it could be as well. First, if by chance, you planted your crookneck squash early and the plants were exposed to very cool temperatures for a few days, that can cause them to be stunted and nonproductive for their entire life. Secondly, it might be one of the rot diseases that sometimes appear on squash and, if it is, it likely is choanephora fruit rot. You'll see this rot in high heat, high humidity conditions. With it, you'll see immature fruit form but then shrivel, turn a very light tannish-brown and will decay or rot. Once this happens, there is not much you can do. There are no organic or chemical controls for this. I just remove and compost all the bad squash, cut back on moisture if possible, and hope that the next squash that pollinate don't have the same issues. To prevent this kind of rot on future plants, plant in raised beds which drain more quickly so the plants don't stay too wet, space the plants far apart to allow for good air circulation, and water less often, preferably with drip irrigation or soaker hoses that put the water into the soil and not on the leaves. Once again, my squash plants get watered once a week deeply and that's it. To much moisture causes all kinds of issues in a veggie garden and I go to the opposite extreme and probably keep my garden a bit too much on the dry side to avoid the diseases. To return to the pollination issue, be sure you're seeing bees and that pollination is occurring. It could be you had bees, they pollinated the zucchini squash and then something happened to the bees and they didn't come back and pollinate the crookneck. Be sure you aren't using any insecticides that might have killed or discouraged the bees. The female blossoms have tiny squash at the end of each blossom. If they aren't being pollinated, they'll turn brown and fall off. The difference in fruit drop caused by a lack of pollination versus fruit rot is that the baby squash don't enlarge and just brown/fall off if it is a lack of pollination, but the fruit begin to enlarge and grow some before turning brown and falling off if it is fruit rot. Dawn

Your Caribbean red looks healthy in the picture, minus the wrinkling. I sometimes have the same problem with the exact plant. I have 10 of them, plus 12 ghost peppers, plus 8 chocolate habas, and a few more different varieties of hot pepper plants. All and All I have over 70 hot pepper plants and have been growing for nine years and even crossed a few species. "NO" it is not a bug problem. Over the years growing hot peppers plants, I have noticed a few things that affect my plants. (1) How hot is it where you live? When a plant grows new leaves at night then gets hammered by very hot days of 100 degrees or hotter like in Texas the structure of the leaves deform especially with little humidity. The cell walls harden before they can fully develop. When I control the sun�s contact everything goes back to normal. People have the idea the more sun the better. That�s "BS" when I control the temperature in my green house below 98 degrees and the sun�s contact my plants get huge. Last year my ghost peppers got over eight feet tall and produced around 100 pounds of product. "Think about it" plants thrive in their habitats� "specific soil, Temperature, humidity, PH, and rain". If you plant them in the ground and did nothing to help them, they would be dead in no time, unless they are native to that area or live in same environment. (2) PH can affect them. Try to save rain water. (3) Try to stay away from over fertilizing them and over watering them. When you do excessive watering your plants will stop absorbing nutrients and they will stop growing roots, keeping them smaller in size. They need to dry out a bit to absorb oxygen unless you are doing hydroponics. I only fertilize around 4 � 5 times a season.