Spotted and Yellowing leaves

[konflict]

Hello all! As I'm new to this forum I hope to gain insight and knowledge from fellow pepper gardener's. The issue I'm having is with yellow spots and yellowing leaves. To give background on the plant, I started it from seed early in the year and transplanted to a container using a mix of Miracle Gro, Amends and Perlite. I'm pretty certain I don't over water the plant since I only water about twice a week (containers are on 3rd story balcony with 4-5 hrs of direct sunlight). The PH level in this pot is around 6.4 (using a cheap PH guage from walmart). I've also been using Bonnie's 8-4-4 fertilizer in one of the weekly waterings.
Here's a photo of the whole plant and then a close up of the leave(s). Any pointers are greatly appreciated.


Charleston Hot Pepper Plant by dt3kt, on Flickr


Leaf Yellowing & Spots by dt3kt, on Flickr

 

[Avon Barksdale]

Too much fertilizer, some of the leaf tips are burnt and the margins are yellow, older leaves are turning yellow with necrotic spots and dropping. Miracle Grow probably has too much nutrients for small chile peppers to begin with, let alone with the added 8-4-4.

It doesn't look terribly burnt though and looks like it's still growing fairly well, but I wouldn't give it anything until it get much, much bigger, except maybe some CalMag. The time released fertilizers in the Miracle Grow will be more than enough for a long time.

 

[konflict]

Thanks for the quick reply Avon. I'll pick some CalMag up and cut out anything else for awhile. Hopefully I can get this guy into better health. It's just strange to me that this one plant, out of about 15, is the only one looking like this. I used the same medium for all of them and others are looking pretty healthy, albeit in my opinion small in size by comparison to others. On some of the healthier plants, I do have blossoms dropping off and not really certain about the cause of that. One in particular, I hand pollinated three of the blossoms and pods are now growing on those but the other blossoms are sprouting yet never open up, turn brown and fall off. Anyway again thanks for the input on the yellowing problem.

 

[Avon Barksdale]

Well I'm not saying they look like they need CalMag right now, but it probably couldn't hurt.

As for the flowers dropping, here's the infamous Willard list of possible causes:

1. Day temp too high >95F
2. Night temp too low <65F
3. Too much nitrogen fertilizer
4. Too much water
5. Low light levels (reduces fertility).
6. Very low humidity (reduces fertility)
7. Poor air circulation (air circulation contributes to pollination).
8. Lack of pollinating insects.
9. Size of pot
10. Too much mineral in feedwater.
11. Too much grower attention.

You can also shake the plants to move the pollen around and try to set more pods.