Can anybody help me out? I am doing something wrong and don't know what.

For the past 3 years, I have planted red and yellow bell peppers. The plants are healthy and doing great, as always, but the peppers, when they are about 3-4 inches long and still green, start to rot and fall off the vine instead of ripening.

Are they getting too much or too little of something? Or is it environmental? I live on the coast, and it is very hot and humid.

Any thoughts would be SO appreciated!

Wher do these peppers start to rot? At the blossom end, the bottom?
Since peppers are of the same family of plants as tomaotes and grow similarly they are also susceptable to blososm End Rot and the causes are the same and the cure is the same.
Start with a good, reliable soil test. Contact your local office of the Virginia State Universtiy USDA Cooperative Extension Service, http://www.ext.vt.edu/offices/ about how to do that. Soil pH is one of the major factors here becasue that influences the level of calcium available, but just as important is the soil being evenly moist but well drained.

It could also be the result of the dreaded pepper fly maggot.
The peppers get squishy and drippy...inside the pepper you may find white grub looking larvae.
Not a good find.

I just cut open the latest rotten pepper and ther were no grubs, larvae, or anything other than gooey stinky innards.

I don't think it's end rot because the peppers start rotting from various places: walls, shoulders, and tips.

I'll plan to send off a soil sample in the fall, but meanwhile, is it too late to crush up some egg shells and work into the soil to try to add calcium? I add tons of compost every spring before planting, but I'm not big on fertilizing, so now I'm thinking that might be the problem.

If it was pepper maggots, you may not necessarily always find them in the total rotted mess, they may have moved on...
Sometimes I'll find them in a pepper with a fresh looking bad spot, tear it open and there it is.
Bummer.

Hope the problem resolves for you.
Let us know what you find out.
Judy

Putting egg shells into the soil now will not help this year, in a couple of years possibly, but not this year.
What is your soils pH?
What did the last soil test say about the nutrient balance?
That you added compost is good but what is the humus level in your soil?

Lisa,

Usually soil problems won't cause rotting, unless the peppers are also very small, and not growing very well in addition to the rotting. When the peppers look good, but start rotting when ripening, it is usually pepper maggots or something else inside. If it was an external bug, peppers of all sizes would be affected, but these things start out in small peppers, which seem fine, as you stated, but eventually, usually when ripeness is near, start getting spots rotting at various places - caused my the maggots crawling near the skin, and maybe breaking the skin in spots.

Here is a recent pepper thread in which I discussed this bug in detail. There are other, similar bugs, which lay eggs on the peppers, and the larvae cause similar problems, but this is the most common. And it seems bells and milder peppers are the worst affected.

Just remember, dispose of all of those infected peppers in the trash - do not compost them, as they may live, and re-infect your crop. And if you see those little white spots on the peppers, pick them and cut them open immediately - even when the outside is not showing rotten spots, you will often see tunnels inside. Again, dispose of them. I have done this in the past, with every single pepper from certain varieties, then let them reflower, and gotten a second, though smaller crop, as the flies are pretty much gone by the mid-end of July.

Dave

Thanks, y'all, for all your replies. I will do some more observation and see what I come up with; although now I'm terrified of pepper maggots! :O

I haven't had a soil test done yet, but I know it's not good dirt. I live on a coastal plain, so there's nothing but poor soil on top of clay for miles in all directions. That's why I hand-till about 6 inches of organic compost in every year.

Also, my yard is very small, so I don't have a compost pile; plants go into the trash at the end of the season, and I buy organic compost in the spring. Never thought that was a good thing until, maybe, now!

Thanks again for your ideas!

Lisa

How many pepper plants do you raise? Do they all rot?

Allen - only 4 this year; 3 red and 1 yellow.

Only 2 plants have been affected so far, but those are the plants that have the "ripest" fruit on them. None are very big, though, maybe 4 inches long. That's why I thought a nutrient deficiency might be the problem, although the plants themselves are very healthy and bushy.

Last year I had 3 plants and only got one pepper.