Plants not doing so well

Some of my pepper plants haven't been doing so well. It seems like whatever I do they just keep getting worse and now they are close to dying. I bought the plants from chileplants.com and I received nice healthy plants. I transplanted them into some garden soil that I already had and the plants started growing right away but the leaves that they produced were very small and very curled. Now those small curly leaves are all falling and the plants like just about ready to die. I live in South Florida so the temperature has been extremely hot the last few weeks and i water the plants when they start to wilt which can sometimes be daily. I have given them some bone meal and blood meal in very small doses thinking that the leaf curling was a nutrient deficiency and when that didn't help I added some alaskan fish fertilizer (a pellet based one that is 6-4-6) which so far hasn't helped either. The leaves end up turning slightly black and just start falling. The branches are becoming very flexible and starting to turn yellow. Any help would be much appreciated.
 
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your plants look like most of mine :/ and most of them have dyed off is it not enough root space or not proper soil is what I am thinking and I did use fertilizer on mine but when I did one time they get like a chemical shock and the fertilized burned the leaves away and it got weak and flimsy and my plants dyed from too much fertilizing.
 
I would say that most of the problems you're dealing with are from lack of drainage.  Your garden soil is a bit too dense and water isn't draining well.  With that, your roots are probably sitting in water, which is causing the yellows (overwater).  With the hot temps and humidity, watering your plants because the leaves are wilting, doesn't mean the plant needs water.  Picking up the pot and seeing if it feels light/dry, is just about the only way you will truly know they need water.
 
Just my opinion based on lessons learned.
 
Do you know what kind of garden soil?  Does it have fertilizers in it?  
 
dlsolo said:
I would say that most of the problems you're dealing with are from lack of drainage.  Your garden soil is a bit too dense and water isn't draining well.  With that, your roots are probably sitting in water, which is causing the yellows (overwater).  With the hot temps and humidity, watering your plants because the leaves are wilting, doesn't mean the plant needs water.  Picking up the pot and seeing if it feels light/dry, is just about the only way you will truly know they need water.
 
Just my opinion based on lessons learned.
 
Do you know what kind of garden soil?  Does it have fertilizers in it?  
 
I'm with you on this one. Try taking one of them out of the pot.... dirt and all. See how wet the soil is at the bottom, and take a big whiff. If it smells like rot, then you've found your problem. If you don't have any better draining pots to transplant to, try putting a one or two inch layer of sand and pea gravel in the bottom before you put the plant back in. Good luck!
 
Another option is that if you're going to have the pots sitting on the ground anyway, you could just grow the plants in the ground.  That provides much better water regulation unless you are in an area that gets an excessive amount of rain or the slope of the land causes water to accumulate there.  In-ground I can even grow in my terrible draining mostly clay yard soil, once the rainiest part of spring is over.  The results aren't as good as tilling in compost, but that mostly means a little less growth.
 
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