Sacramento Digs Gardening Article
Your resource for Sacramento-area gardening news, tips and events

Articles Recipe Index Keyword Index Calendar Twitter Facebook Instagram About Us Contact Us

What's causing those brown spots on my peppers?

Sacramento Digs Gardening
BY Debbie Arrington PUBLISHED AUG 30, 2019

Blossom end rot shows up on peppers when they've received uneven watering and too much sun. (Photo: Debbie Arrington)

Signs of uneven irrigation pop up in late summer

It’s a maddening malady of late summer. You wait weeks and weeks for peppers to ripen – or at least get big enough to pick. Then they develop an ugly brown spot or callus.

What happened?

Most likely, those brown spots are pepper blossom-end rot. This can happen on the sides of peppers as well as the bottom. It’s not a fungal disease or the result of a pest invasion, but a calcium deficiency. The pepper plant didn’t have enough calcium available while the fruit was developing. Without that necessary building block, these too-thin cell walls collapse, then rot.

The answer is not to add more calcium to the soil (although that probably won’t hurt), but to be consistent with irrigation. Overwatering as well as underwatering can lead to those brown spots.

Blossom end rot, which also affects tomatoes and squash, usually occurs if soil was allowed to dry out too much, then flooded with water. That happens a lot during late summer vacations; gardeners return and overcompensate for not irrigating while they were gone.

The plant responds by pulling up as much water as it can, growing rapidly. But if there isn’t enough calcium available to go with that sudden abundance of moisture, brown rot follows.

The good news: It can be corrected. The damaged peppers are edible; just cut off the brown spots.

Then, remember to be more consistent in irrigation. Mulch around plants can help keep moisture even and let the remaining peppers develop normally.

Other factors that can lead to blossom-end rot are too much nitrogen-heavy fertilizer or ammonia. For peppers, stick to fertilizers with more phosphate than nitrogen or potassium. Excess sodium also can be an issue.

To boost calcium, add bone meal, rock phosphate or crushed egg shells to your planting bed next spring.

For more on blossom-end rot: http://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/GARDEN/VEGES/ENVIRON/blossomendrot.html

Comments

0 comments have been posted.

GENERAL GARDENING

An article about gardening.

Keywords:

gardening Sacramento peppers vegetables calcium deficiency soil moisture blossom end rot irrigation summer weather sunburn plant diseases

Newsletter Subscription

Sacramento Digs Gardening to your inbox.

Taste Fall! E-cookbook

Find our fall recipes here!

Thanks to Our Sponsor!

Local News

Sites We Like

Garden Checklist for week of Nov. 3

November still offers good weather for fall planting:

* If you haven't already, it's time to clean up the remains of summer. Pull faded annuals and vegetables. Prune dead or broken branches from trees.

* Now is the best time to plant most trees and shrubs. This gives them plenty of time for root development before spring growth. They also benefit from fall and winter rains.

* Set out cool-weather annuals such as pansies and snapdragons.

* Lettuce, cabbage and broccoli also can be planted now.

* Plant garlic and onions.

* Keep planting bulbs to spread out your spring bloom. Some possible suggestions: daffodils, crocuses, hyacinths, tulips, anemones and scillas.

* This is also a good time to seed wildflowers and plant such spring bloomers as sweet pea, sweet alyssum and bachelor buttons.

* Rake and compost leaves, but dispose of any diseased plant material. For example, if peach and nectarine trees showed signs of leaf curl this year, clean up under trees and dispose of those leaves instead of composting.

* Save dry stalks and seedpods from poppies and coneflowers for fall bouquets and holiday decorating.

* For holiday blooms indoors, plant paperwhite narcissus bulbs now. Fill a shallow bowl or dish with 2 inches of rocks or pebbles. Place bulbs in the dish with the root end nestled in the rocks. Add water until it just touches the bottom of the bulbs. Place the dish in a sunny window. Add water as needed.

* Give your azaleas, gardenias and camellias a boost with chelated iron.

* For larger blooms, pinch off some camellia buds.

* Prune non-flowering trees and shrubs while dormant.

* To help prevent leaf curl, apply a copper fungicide spray to peach and nectarine trees after they lose their leaves this month. Leaf curl, which shows up in the spring, is caused by a fungus that winters as spores on the limbs and around the tree in fallen leaves. Sprays are most effective now.

Taste Spring! E-cookbook

Find our spring recipes here!

Taste Summer! E-cookbook

Find our summer recipes here!

Taste Winter! E-cookbook

Find our winter recipes here!