Pepper Plants

Howdy,

Welcome to my Dubai based container vegetable gardening blog.

Today I would like to share an email I recieved from Dan (with his permission) about his problem with his pepper plants.  I hope this may be of help to others with a similiar problem or someone can post a comment that knows what problem Dan is having and can share it with all of us.

Hi Bubba,

I have been following your blog for a little while and it's great to have some regional information and to hear your experience about growing things in the UAE.  I've found it difficult finding information about gardening for this climate.  One article I particularly enjoyed was the one about the 2 bucket system. When I'm less lazy I will give this a go.  I'm hoping to acquire a book about gardening in the desert which is based on Arizona to see if it may hold lots of useful information.

I too am attempting to grow vegetables and have some tomato seedings on the go as well as a chilli plant. The chilli plant is kind of special as it's my first one and grown from seed from Carrefour bird eye chillies that I had kept in the freezer.  I wasn't hopeful after my feeble attempts with lettuce seeds but it's worked.  However, the leaves have developed brown/yellow spots with some leave suffering sever damage.  Initially it was grown indoors by a glass door and once it was about 13 inches tall I left it outside to harden up.  Gradually It's spent morning sun to full sun out there now it's much cooler.  It wilted heavily in the heat so I've brought it back in for a few days though I don't want to deprive it of the sun that they apparently love.

If you have some time please would you take a look at the photo of my chilli plant and offer advice on the condition of it?  I too am using a trial and error cycle of self education about gardening but hope that you may be able to shed some light on what I may be doing wrong.

My reply:

Hi Dan,

Thanks for the email and kind remarks and very sorry for the delay in getting back to you. 

I wish I knew more about peppers.  I am having a hard time getting my peppers seeds to germinate.  I had only one come up just lately which I hope to blog about soon.  I also bought some more pepper plants this weekend from a guy at the Friday Market (Sharjah-Fujeirah Rd.)  near Masafi.  He, like the others, told me it was the big pepper so I believed him and bought 6 plants at Dhs. 1.00/ea.  At that price I am ready to take a chance.

I do not know what is wrong with your plant.  I looks like a diease but it could be lack of fertizler, minerials (iron) or too much water.  You should however remove any badly affected leaves so to reduce the chance of spreading.  Take a look under the leaves for any small bugs/aphids - they can suck the like out of a plant.  Peppers apparently do not like to have wet feet so if you have water constantly sitting in your tray from watering them you might need to water less.  Are you fertizlering it?  Use a water soluble type - they come in liquid and powder form - following their instruction you just mix it with your water before applying.

Dan, hope you can also let us know how your plants are doing by posting comments on the blog as others may have the same problem.  If I can figure out how to do it - can I post this email on my blog?

Thanks!

Bubba

Dan's Reply

Thank you for your reply.  I'm pleased to say that there were no bugs but I did plant it into soil that was pretty old and hadn't fertilised it initially.  I haven't been able to find a liquid fertiliser but have been using tomato feed granules.  Having pinched off the weak leaves that went very limp in the sun and it seems to be working on the more hardy leaves that can cope being outside.  We will see how things turn out.

Dan

So, as I said earlier - I hope this was helpful to others and if someone can tell us what Dan's pepper plant might be suffering from it would be much appreicated.

Today's entertaiment is:

Ok maybe it was a bit corny but I really like to old Muppet TV shows more so than the movies but that doesn't mean I won't go see the new movie when I can.

 

Thanks for stopping by!

Bubba