I have been growing hot peppers for a couple of seasons now and I am stumped as to why my peppers are dropping fruit like crazy. I live in south Florida and I have 11 different types of chilies. Hatch, choc hab, wht hab, orange hab., red savina, ghost, jalap. sorrano, yellow scotch bon and an orange mini sweet just for fun. I use only organic fert mostly worm castings a little blood meal and bone meal as needed. The problem is after a bloom has been harvested the plants seem to for lack of a better term "molt". As in the bottom leaves yellow then fall followed by a spurt of vegetative growth followed by another bloom. All was well until about 2 monts ago when blooms started dropping off. this was followed by the few immature peppers. I thought it was a nitrogen deficiency so I fertilized again and the yellowing stopped but the fruit drop continued. The weather has been very warm 85 plus during the day and humid 50% plus. Our rainfall has been inconsistent and I water as needed I treated with 1 tblsp Epsom salt per gallon of water and this seemed to have no positive effect and caused leaf curling on the ghost's. I need some opinions before I use Epsom salt again as I am not convinced that the cause is nitrogen lock. I use no pesticides. I have a healthy population of lady bugs, spiders and birds that do that for me. Any insights would be extremely helpful.
Dropping immature peppers
- Thread starter jedi43
- Start date
had a big bloom 2 weeks ago and now its being followed by a blossom/immature pod drop, this happens every once and awhile "Nature Did It" and I feel your pain down here in Loxahatchee.
One of my choc. habs dropped a few, but now seems to be o.k.?????
from Vermont.
Greetings from Defcon HQ...
Thank you for the warm welcome.I was in the pepper patch this am. While the drop has continued it seems to have abated. There are still peppers left on the plants and they are growing bigger than any I have seen. Except the ghosts all of the green immature pods have fallen. But their was a huge bloom last week so I hope to make some hot sauce eventually.
