Hmmmm... just an offhand guess, but I would say some sort of disease. I do not believe it is a watering or nutrient problem because there is no clear pattern to the dying leaves and I do not believe it's an insect problem for the same reason. I would recommend removing the damaged leaves immediately and leaving the rest of the plant. Much of the time diseased plants do just fine if the disease pressure is controlled (removing affected leaves). Perhaps someone else has seen the same thing and knows what the affliction is, but if it were me I would start off by getting the affected leaves away from the plant.

chile plants are very resilient. It could be the overwatering and it definitly could be overfertilizing, however, if you can fix the problem they will probably grow new growth. The stems look healthy to me, it just looks like the leaves have drooped all the way. I would pick all the chiles and flowers off the plants. Leave them alone, no fertilizer, no water and see what happenes. I am willing to bet you will see new growth fairly quickly. Otherwise, the only way to really control Mother Nature's watering plan is to plant in pots that can have better drainage or be moved when a heavy rain is coming through kendra

I would(if they haven't been in the ground for TOO long) dig them up deep and wide, rinse off the roots and transplant into large containers with some very well draining potting mix and perlite. If you do go this route, you'll want to shade them for the next week after transplant. In any case, those 115F desert temps can't help. Heavy mulch and shade cloth (both which can't help if you're OVER watering) for a good part of the day is almost mandatory if you're expecting the plants to set flowers in those temps. The wilting towards the end of the day is common in high heat. As long as they perk back up in the evening. Kevin

Dave, Thank you. I know they are leggy :( unfortunately, it's one of the only spots where I can actually grow halfway decent tomatoes other than the wood bed in the side yard. As a result, I always plant the more productive cherry type tomatoes knowing I will get a decent harvest, albeit smaller than if they were full plants. I promise though that they actually look worse than normal because I have cut a ton of leaves off because of early blight. It was one of the only options to control it because up until about the last week or two it literally would rain every day or two making applying daconil nearly impossible and I honestly didn't feel comfortable applying it that often. We got over 3" in a week about 2 weeks ago... This bed actually has problems retaining moisture because it is full of wood/bark mulch as it was when I bought it. I know that is bad and I was going to change the soil this year, but an injury earlier in the year made that plan a bust. I will be putting in new soil next year. When I pulled the one plant up, and checked the soil, it was fairly dry, not bone dry, but not saturated either. today was actually the first day I watered my plants since planting (other than to feed) since I planted them. It has been almost a week at least since it rained, and with it this hot, I thought it was a water issue. The ones wilting from the heat though and very mild and barely noticeable with only the top leaves showing problems in the absolute midday sun. As for the mulch, I do not know anything about where it came from other than it is straw that was bought from a hardware/ feed store up the street. It has been on the plants for 2 months since the day I planted them. The ones in the wood box bed have the same mulch and no problems are seen. I'm just wondering if I should pull the plant up or let it be? Do you think it could be a result of the miracle gro? That was the only thing that changed before this happened. Also, if it was bacterial wilt, would the cutting have recovered like it did? I'm not sure what to do at this point... Dawn