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disease I think this is likely BLS - Thoughts?

hadanero

hadanero

My baccatums looked great on Monday evening before my trip. Returned last night and I think they're showing symptoms of BLS. It was dramatic and rapid. Spent the last 30 minutes defoliating. There's photos of most of the leaves I picked below, along with a photo showing some more detail.

Does this look like BLS to you all? If so, what's the usual outcome for the plant/harvest? I've got a large load of pods not yet ripe on these 4 plants.

I'm picking all the symptomatic leaves, and will be applying a copper-based bactericide. At the end of the season, I can trash the plants and bags they grew in.

Thankfully, they're all in pots well away from the rest of the garden because my wife liked how they looked.

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Seeing those pictures made me think blight, I hate blight and get panicked easily over the thought of it. I would be wildly checking over the plant stems to be certain. I don't know why but I have never had bacterial leaf scorch so I don't know how rapid it usually is but it should just be a spray and pray situation.
 
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Bacterial Leaf Spot can be a tough call. I've often read that the "active border" around the central blemish is significant in the diagnoses. That said, I've seen what I think looks like an active border on leaves where I was pretty sure it wasn't BLS. There's also Fungal Leaf Spot to consider, which seems not quite the death sentence of BLS.

I googled about how to identify the active border and got this result "This border is a water-soaked halo that appears as a darker, greasy-looking ring around the leaf spot itself, distinguishing it from the surrounding healthy tissue." Not sure how much help that is as I know other things can give that dark-around-light appearance. The leaves that look most like BLS to me are the couple around the top middle of the third picture, where you see a bunch of spots and the dark brown borders around the tan inner spots.

Sorry for a wishy washy answer, but I struggle with this and don't like to throw out plants that might be ok. The way I deal with it is if they're in a container, I isolate them by not letting them drain water into any other soil and not sharing tools unless properly disinfected before using them with other plants. If it's in the ground or a shared raised bed I'm much quicker to pull the trigger and yoink them out so they don't create broader contamination. Given that yours are in containers I'd probably do as you're doing and keep in mind that it's supposedly incurable (though perhaps treatable to some degree) and definitely passes on through seeds.
 
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CaneDog said:
Bacterial Leaf Spot can be a tough call. I've often read that the "active border" around the central blemish is significant in the diagnoses. That said, I've seen what I think looks like an active border on leaves where I was pretty sure it wasn't BLS. There's also Fungal Leaf Spot to consider, which seems not quite the death sentence of BLS.

I googled about how to identify the active border and got this result "This border is a water-soaked halo that appears as a darker, greasy-looking ring around the leaf spot itself, distinguishing it from the surrounding healthy tissue." Not sure how much help that is as I know other things can give that dark-around-light appearance. The leaves that look most like BLS to me are the couple around the top middle of the third picture, where you see a bunch of spots and the dark brown borders around the tan inner spots.

Sorry for a wishy washy answer, but I struggle with this and don't like to throw out plants that might be ok. The way I deal with it is if they're in a container, I isolate them by not letting them drain water into any other soil and not sharing tools unless properly disinfected before using them with other plants. If it's in the ground or a shared raised bed I'm much quicker to pull the trigger and yoink them out so they don't create broader contamination. Given that yours are in containers I'd probably do as you're doing and keep in mind that it's supposedly incurable (though perhaps treatable to some degree) and definitely passes on through seeds.
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No apology needed at all, @CaneDog -- my Google-Fu led to a lot of "maybe?" results, so I thought I'd see if it felt any more certain to other pepper growers. But it's really hard to identify this stuff with just a picture.

I'm going to run with the assumption that it is, at least with regards to general caution. I'll not collect any of these seeds, and I'll trash the plants/bags at the end of the season. I appreciate the reminder re: water run off and tool usage.

I'm going to grab some of the Southern Ag copper-based treatment and see if I can help these plants through at least the flush they're throwing out right now. If it's fungal, that should help too.
 
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