Bacterial Spot

I've been struggling with bacterial spot on my peppers since I was stupid enough to bring in an infected six-pack from the garden center. I always hate finding a new disease because I don't know yet how to fight it. Or if it is even possible to fight. Everything I read about the disease says my yields would be severely reduced. And the pepper fruit could be affected by the disease.

One control strategy was to pick off all the leaves that I saw that had any sign of the spot. I was doing this once a week, but it seemed that I was doing the plant more harm than good. It is hard to tell if the disease spread to new leaves is fast enough to warrant defoliating the plants once a week.

I would often get pepper drop after picking the leaves off and often not small little ones just setting, but half sized ones. So this week I left them on. I think next week if I haven't seen any massive spread, I'll pick out only the ones that are severely infected, but leave the rest.

Wednesday is always spray day provided it doesn't rain, which is my main line of defense against bacterial or fungal diseases. The typical spray that people would use for such things is copper sprays. Constantly using copper sprays in the garden can upset the micro nutrient balance of the soil. I tend to stay away from them. In addition the research that I've been doing says that bacterial spot is no longer controlled much at all by copper sprays. The bacteria has developed a resistance to it. I use Serenade. It is a bacteria that fights off other bacteria and fungi. I like it because it is non toxic. You will notice however that I use a respirator when applying it. And a full body covering that gets washed afterwards. And safety glasses (after spraying myself in the eye once, I always use eye wear when I spray). Though the spray itself isn't toxic, anytime you are exposed to large amounts of protein, especially inhaled, you can develop allergies to it. The last thing I need is another sensitivity. So I'm a good girl and spray safely. Though I always wonder what my neighbors think as they watch me in this get up.

Scotch bonnet with perfect leaves

Interestingly enough this bacteria is species dependent. Most of my peppers are Capsicum annuum - sweet and chili peppers. All of them have spots. But I also have scotch bonnet peppers which are Capsicum chinense. These are not affected at all. I have not one little spot on them. And I don't even spray them any more. They are immune. The Tabasco peppers on the other hand are Capsicum frutescens and are affected. In addition some peppers are just plain more resistant. The serrano peppers are growing well. The early jalapenos are having more problems.

Tabasco peppers, spot can be seen at the bottom left leaf

I also discovered that spraying with fish emulsion seems to help them out. It could just be because they grow faster that way and outgrow the disease a bit. But it could provide a bit of assistance. So I went to the internet to see if there have been studies on it. And lo and behold, someone did a study with neem oil and fish emulsion. Fish emulsion helps just a little, but neem oil is more helpful. Now I don't have any neem, and buying a lot of sprays to put on my peppers is not all that worth it. The peppers just aren't worth tons of money to deal with. And I like to keep my life simple. Though I am interested to see what Regalia might be like. It seems like a very interesting spray. It turns on disease fighting genes in the plants and works on all the things I have problems with. It is an extract of the giant knotweed. Hey knotweed is good for something! But like the aspirin I spray on my tomatoes early in the season, it is a better preventative than a cure. Maybe I'll get this next year to deal with my fungal issues. I like the idea of making the plant fight its own battles. And I don't have to spray every single week.

So the peppers are doing OK. They sure do look pretty, but so much foliage has been removed already. Many midsized peppers have been lost. I see some peppers starting to get bacterial spot on them. I don't like green bell peppers. I like red peppers. Though some are starting to turn, that process can take weeks and weeks. Do they have weeks? I don't know.

And now they have a new threat. The leaves of the Anaheims (mostly) have started to show signs of something. Mosaic virus? The neighbor that shares that side of the house with me does smoke, but I usually think of mosaic virus as mottling the leaves too not just puckering them. He also sprayed Roundup along the fence. But I didn't notice any of the leaves near the fence with any issues. I think he was pretty careful about spraying. And these are in the middle of the patch not near the fence. What else can cause this type of puckering? Well soon it might be time to rip them out.

And just to put the icing on the cake last night it hailed on us. At least we got almost an inch of rain to go with it. Of course it was after I had already watered the garden. The hail wasn't that bad as it didn't last long. The sunflower leaves seemed to get the worst of it. The poor peppers got a few shredded leaves. My first thought when I saw the hail start was, "what can I throw over the garden?" I really wanted to protect everything. I should look at the bright side of it all. The lettuce usually gets it worst and the lettuce was all dead from the heat already. Some days you just have to laugh.