this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2024
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Lots of peppers do well in the heat as long as they have plenty of water. This looks like it could be leaf curl, though. I’m not qualified to diagnose anything, though. Start by giving them some more water, and maybe a little bit of tomato fertilizer.
That's the thing. We've been getting way more than seasonal averages for rain, and when there's more than two days of no rain, we put on the sprinkler for 20-30 min.
We also have about 4-6 inches of mulch on top to get the soil from drying out.
4-6 inches of mulch sounds like it might be too much.
https://extension.umd.edu/resource/excess-mulch-problems/
That resource seems to be specific to trees. Just about every other gardening resource (blogs, websites, YouTube videos from respected gardeners) recommend at least a few inches of mulch.
A few is 2-3" or so :)
Here's the same information on a more plant agnostic site: https://www.levelgreenlandscaping.com/blog/five-mulching-mistakes-plus-the-right-way-to-do-it
I'm not saying too much mulch is your issue - especially if it's new and not compacted yet. It might be an issue in the future though.
Ya, you're right. I guess I should have been clearer with my description. Near the plants the mulch is thinner. At about 6 inches away is when the mulch is thickened.
I was told very explicitly by my wife to make a "depression" around each plant when putting the mulch down. Basically to make the mulch very thin near the plant.
I'll have to check tomorrow, but I'm thinking I may have put the mulch too close to some of the plants.
But the thing that still confuses me is that the ones we grew from seed are doing fine. It seems to only be the garden centre bought pepper plants that are bad.
Sometimes transplanted plants struggle to throw roots into the soil they’re placed into, especially if the soil isnt super loose amazing primo grade A soil.
I’ve had some plants that I’ve transplanted into shitty soil that struggle to root into the new soil and so kind of just fester at their current size, whereas plants sown directly into that soil grow better.
This is actually pretty common for me with my fish peppers when I use a soil that has too much fibrous wood content.
Yeah I always throw some potting soil with some slow fertilizer mixed in around the edge of the hole before the plant, before filling in after transplanting and honestly it's good to sorta mash down the roots a bit so they really press into the soil but absolutely transplanted plants are not a guarantee. Doubly so if the roots have all wrapped around the inside of the pot and looks bound.
Also definitely agree that too much wood is an issue. But I bet they were not getting enough water past the mulch and just couldn't get good root growth, with it being anaerobic and nitrogen removing from all the slow decomposing fresh wood mulch.
So I decided to sacrifice one of the gnarlier plants to see what I can find. Here are the images:
https://postimg.cc/gallery/N2XxkkY
The roots did shoot out beyond the bulb, there was a lot of pulling and tearing as I was lifting it out. But I also noticed that some of the stems are woody and brown. My neighbour said that she noticed the “stinging bugs” are exceptionally bad this year.
The fact that the issue follows the garden center plants is very interesting. Good luck! I hope you're able to get to the bottom of it.