Jerry Brust, IPM Vegetable Specialist, University of Maryland; jbrust@umd.edu
This is just a little article about how tough it has been to grow vegetables this year, especially tomatoes and peppers. I have seen more blossom end rot in peppers in just this season compared with the total in peppers for the last 5 years. We just don’t see blossom end rot that much in peppers as compared with tomatoes (where we have seen a great deal of it too). This year has been especially hard on getting the water just right for peppers to do well but not too much water so that phytophthora becomes a problem. In figure one the center pepper has sunscald the two peppers on either side of it have blossom end rot. Figure 2 shows just blossom end rot. If you have blossom end rot problems this year in your peppers and other vegetables don’t be too hard on yourself this was an extremely difficult year to get the watering right. The use of tensiometers in the future may help you make better irrigation decisions and if you have not used them you should think about trying them.
Figure 1. Blossom end rot on the two outside peppers and sunscald on the center pepper
Figure 2. Blossom end rot on pepper with secondary fungus infection