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Hey everyone, I'm new here and just wanted to say how much I appreciate all the great advice on vegetable/herb gardening. I am an extreme novice when it comes to this stuff and have recently started a small container garden on my balcony.
Up until the past couple of days, everything has looked great, but recently my Bell Peppers started looking a bit "ill." The leaves began to develop brown spots and holes. They also began to wilt right where the stem meets the leaf and a few even fell off. The flowers also seem pretty droopy as well. I live in Chicago (Zone 6) and have an eastern exposure. My plants get about 6-7 hours of direct sunlight every day. I am currently growing two pepper plants in a black 3 gallon plastic container.
I have been watering them every other day (checking the soil regularly for dryness) but they still seem to be wilting. I am thinking it might be the black pot is causing the soil to heat up too much? Though I was under the impression that Peppers liked hot weather. The temperature has ranged from 65-95 degrees here in Chicago over the past week or so.
I am also growing two Cayenne Peppers in another 3 gallon container and patio tomatoes (1 to each 3 gallon container). The Cayenne peppers are showing similar symptoms but not as bad and the tomatoes look to be doing well. All are growing in the same black containers.
NoahTheTrue - Pepper Mild Mottle Virus (PMMV) is VERY common worldwide, and I often see symptoms of it on pepper seedlings for sale at nurseries. That's how I got it in my soil years ago.
Bell Peppers are affected worst by the virus, and I had to give up growing them. I switched over to sweet non-bell varieties like Gypsy and Carmen and found that they do very well in spite of PMMV. I think the virus is finally out of my soil and I can grow bell peppers again, but it took years of growing peppers from seed only and not growing any bells to achieve that.
