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I am in north TX, (Zone 8) and we have had a VERY HOT summer with about 30 days in triple digits.
I am having a problem with my green bell peppers. They start out looking nice but then develop these large brown patches on them. What is this? Can anyone help me with accurate info please?
Yep! Too much direct sunlight. That's happened to a few of my peppers. You'll be happy to know, though, that you can still harvest them and cut out the bad spots and they still taste great!
TXBBQ.
The same thing happened to us here in Central Texas, zone 8b. I cut some Ashe Juniper branches and stuck them in the soil beside the pepper plants, providing dapple shade. So far it has worked, no more brown patches and the peppers are growing. When the branches start losing their needles, I'll just cut some more. Finally, a use for ashe junipers!
Thanks farmerdill, stephanietx and texasroses. I appreciate the insight.
The pepper in the picture was stunted in growth and fell off the plant yesterday. I have two others with those brown spots (near bottom of plant under leaves) and one growing on top with no shade from leaves, and it has NO brown patch! Go figure!
The leaves provide much needed shade from the hot sun here in our part of the world. Every single pepper I've grown this year that hasn't had any shade has had a sun scald spot on it. The ones growing under the cover of leaves has been perfect in color. If we don't plant them among a taller crop next year, we'll have to erect a shade cloth tent for them.
TXBBQ, It gets superhot here in AZ so I built a sunshade over my garden. It lowers the temp by about 15 degrees in the 100 plus weather and protects my plants really well. You can sorta see it in this photo, only cost me about $120 and it holds up really well in the monsoons.
