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I actually kinda like container gardening. There are a few real upsides. One, you can move the plants out of the rain or sun as needed, when the weather gets brutal. Two, after you get the pepper maggot infestation or whatever, and you know that there are crawly things hanging out in the soil...

Normally, I hate wasps, but when I see a picture like that, I feel a secret affection for them. I have been fighting the hornworm infestation battle over and over for two solid years, and consider wasps my trusted allies and friends.

I took Ajarn's advice, and hand-delivered one of the damaged habs today to the Fairfax County extension service for analysis. They said they will get to the bottom of this by Thursday/Friday and send me the results by email. I'll be sure to post the results here as soon as I get them, for the...

UPDATE: I took a few of the habs to a local nursery today where they have a guy with 30 years of experience in growing vegetables. He actually could not tell me for sure what was going on! Yikes. He said it was 99 % likely to be some kind of cultural issue, not pests or disease. I think that...

I don't think it's sunscald - I've dealt with that before. These are really circles of rot - soft, squishy rotted areas on the surfaces of the peppers. They may be starting out as white discoloration, then going to squishy rotted circles, and completing their journey as holes in the peppers...

I've got some strange kind of rot on about 1/3 to 1/2 of the pods on one of my orange habs. And sadly, the same rot appears to be showing up now on a red hab. It doesn't look like pests or crawly things, but it's not at the blossom end for BER. I can't figure out what's going on here. Any...

My god, man, if I could just do a Vulcan mind-meld with you for one minute so I could download your mind and understand how to make peppers grow like that...

Pods will usually ripen off the plant, in my experience, but they are not anywhere as good/tasty. The main problem is that it takes them a long time to ripen off-plant during which time they get soft and kind of mealy - basically, they get old. There is really no comparison. You should...

I quite agree...the colors are a big plus. I really like seeing different color habs growing next to each other. Mine are ripening and I think the taste test orange vs. red will come in 4-5 days. Meanwhile, we've eaten several of the hot paper lanterns, as they matured early...

It took a hornworm one afternoon to do this. I am just glad that the hornworm decided to leave 5 or 6 leaves, in total, on my habanero for its future growth. Rather generous on its part. Or maybe it was just too stuffed to eat even one more leaf. After all, it pretty much consumed an entire...

Thanks guys! feedback is fun! Here's a couple more pics I just took on the deck ... by the way my deck is in a wind tunnel which is why there's so much elaborate staking, velcro'ing and string tying, without all that I'd be losing branches every day Nicely productive orange hab with about...

I love the chaos of nature in late July

I *think* it may be a temperature thing. The reason I say that is because I have two plants, a fatalii and a morouga red, that have never had a single flower, blossom, or bud. But are very healthy, robust plants 3+ feet tall with many, many forks and branches - beautiful foliage, really. They...

Interesting....I have an Orange Hab with a very very similar stem layout this year. It looks a LOT like yours. It's growing beautifully, with many pods. Nothing wrong there, just an interesting variation on the usual growth plan.

yeah, I was going to say that - pull those initial pods off the plants to get the foliage growth going. Those plants are a little on the young/undeveloped side to be allowed to grow the 2-3 pods they have.

I feel for you, man. I have a lot of experience with blossom end rot. Many other garden ailments strike earlier, so at least you know what you're dealing with. BER comes at the end, when you're all excited about eating the peppers. It truly sucks. There's a product called "Rot Stop", which...

Do you dry the pods first and grind them for adding to caramels, fudge and cookies? No, not at all. We just dice the fataliis and throw them into the mix. In caramels, they melt into the mix and you don't even see them (you definitely taste them, though). In cookies, the end product is a...

My wife keeps asking me, how does a caribbean red taste compared to the familiar orange hab? We have 35-ish carib. reds starting to ripen. Thing is, I've never had one! Anyone know how these compare - hotter? Different tasting? Bonus question: Anyone know what hot paper lanterns taste like...

I've got two totally sterile plants, a Fatalii and a Morouga Red. Both are very healthy, big, bushy plants with many branches and forks. Beautiful foliage. They were grown under the EXACT same conditions as all my other plants. My other fatalii is producing just fine. Neither of these...

I have a feeling that once you wash them off and flush the soil, and give them a week or so to regroup, all will be OK. You may lose some more leaves, but the plants will stabilize at some point and then growth will probably resume. Your problem leaves above don't look that problematic to me -...