What is the most serious problem for pepper plants?

Fusarium Wilt, Mosaic Virus, Spider Mites, Verticillium Wilt can kill pepper plants if left untreated. Everything else on this page is treatable or cosmetic.

Pepper problems

Peppers share most of their problems with tomatoes, being in the same family, but suffer far more from sunscald and blossom drop in heat.

Start from what you can see

Each of these has more than one possible cause, and each page separates them.

Pepper leaves turning yellow Pepper brown spots on leaves Pepper wilting Pepper holes in leaves Pepper curling leaves Pepper stunted growth Pepper rotting fruit Pepper sticky leaves Pepper insects on the plant Pepper brown leaf tips Pepper mottled leaves

Everything that commonly affects pepper plants

Most serious first. Most of the list is treatable or can be ignored.

Fusarium WiltAct now

Fungal disease

Cut the stem lengthwise: brown staining in the ring just under the skin confirms it.

Mosaic VirusAct now

Virus

Light and dark green mottling with soft, blurred boundaries.

Spider MitesAct now

Pest

Fine even stippling rather than discrete spots or holes.

Verticillium WiltAct now

Fungal disease

V-shaped yellow wedges at the leaf margins.

AphidsTreatable

Pest

Dense clusters on new shoots and flower buds rather than scattered individuals.

Bacterial Leaf SpotTreatable

Bacterial disease

Greasy, water-soaked appearance, especially in the morning.

Blossom End RotTreatable

Nutrient problem

Always at the blossom end, never the stem end, and never on the side.

Early BlightTreatable

Fungal disease

Concentric rings inside each brown spot — the bullseye is the giveaway.

Flea BeetlesTreatable

Pest

Many small round shot-holes rather than a few large ones.

Nitrogen DeficiencyTreatable

Nutrient problem

Whole leaf yellows evenly, veins included.

ThripsTreatable

Pest

Silvery or bronze streaks, not spots or holes.

Tomato HornwormTreatable

Pest

Whole stems stripped to bare stalks, not scattered holes.

UnderwateringTreatable

Growing conditions

Leaves dry and crisp rather than soft and limp.

WhitefliesTreatable

Pest

A cloud of tiny white insects that flies up when you shake the plant.

SunscaldMostly cosmetic

Growing conditions

Damage on the side facing the sun, not the blossom end or stem end.

Check these two things first

Push a finger into the soil, two knuckles deep. Wet soil plus a wilting plant means too much water, not too little — and it is the commonest reason a plant is dying. Dry soil plus crisp leaves means the opposite. The leaves look nearly identical either way, so the soil is what tells you.
Turn a damaged leaf over. Half of all diagnoses live on the underside: fuzz means downy mildew, fine webbing means spider mites, clusters of insects mean aphids. Nothing on the top of a leaf is as informative.

Most garden problems are cosmetic and resolve without treatment. Reach for a spray last, not first.

Diagnose your pepper

Already filtered to pepper plants. Add the symptoms and where the trouble started.

1.What plant is it?

Many problems are specific to one family, so this removes a large share of the list straight away.

2.What does it look like?

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Pick everything you can see. Any one match keeps a cause on the list, because you rarely see the whole picture at once.

3.Which part is affected?

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If the roots are involved you will have to unpot or dig to find out — and with a declining plant that is usually the most informative thing you can do.

4.Where did it start?

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The most underused question in plant diagnosis. Trouble that begins at the bottom means something very different from trouble that begins at the top.

15 likely causes

from 1 of 4 answered

4 of these can kill the plant — check those first

Ordered by how well the symptoms match, then by how much damage the cause can do. Rule out the top of the list first.