Bad batch of peppers from Bonnie?

Anyone else experience bacterial infections with bell pepper plants from Bonnie Farms this year?

I put 6 bell pepper plants (of various types: red, yellow, orange, purple and a pablano/ancho) in my small raised bed garden at the end of March and beginning of April, along with some tomato plants and a couple of eggplants and various herbs mix around. They started out like gangbusters, flowering quickly and even setting a couple of pepper fruits. Well, the leaves started turning pale green, developing small holes, then turning yellow with dark spots and dropping from the plant. And the overall plant growth came to a screeching halt. Curiously, my other plants in the nightshade family (tomatoes and eggplants) have been growing vigorously.

Yesterday, I took some of the dropped leaves to my local extension office and the horticulturalist there identified the problem as a bacterial infection (I can't remember which one, and it took a while to look it up, but all the sypmtoms matched). He suggested I pull the peppers and plant something else there that's not in the nightshade family. He didn't seem to think my other plants would be infected if I did so immediately, because that particular type of infection is typically seedborn and it probably wasn't in my soil.

I thought it was curious because I bought the plants from various places, not all from one source. The only thing they had in common was that they all came from Bonnie Farms. I was at Lowes today and looked at some of the pepper plants there. They were all from Bonnie and many of them looked diseased.

Anyone else experience this with pepper plants from Bonnie this year?

I did last year with bell pepper plants i purchased by bonnie. I took them back to Lowes, and was given a refund.

kanita

Note to self:

Keep those receipts!!!!!!


Oh, and say no to Bonnie for pepper plants.

This message was edited May 5, 2006 8:42 PM

Bummer. I bought 1 pepper plant that was bonnie. Haven't planted it yet, but maybe I should nix it.

Anyone else have this problem before I do that?

Hmmmm.

Should we, uh, PEPPER Bonnie Farms with complaints? They ought to know if they are really working with infected seeds. A company that big, who supplies just about everyone, shouldn't be allowed to get away with such practices, if this is really the case.

I read this with a light bulb over my head. Last year all of my peppers that I put out were from Bonnie, and they all did the same as described. I attributed it to the unusually hot and dry weather last summer, but tried to keep them watered regularly. So it is nice to know that I didn't commit planticide on those poor babies!!

Okay, how about...anyone grow a healthy bonnie plant this season?

Haven't bought anything from Bonnie this year. Not because of this problem, just have found what I needed at local nurseries.

Didn't buy any pepper plants from Bonnie, I bought mine from a local Amish nursery. I did buy Bonnie's Hybrid cabbage and Premium Crop broccoli from them. They're all doing great!

I have to admit I've held back (well that has to be a first for me--LOL) on this thread because I have always hated the plants from them. HD, Lowes, and not very good quality nurseries around here carry them. They always look pathetic, no matter where they are located. I always try to support the higher quality, privately (preferably family) owned nurseries. Quality is worth a few cents more--esp. if it causes your entire crop to fail. And you are pumping money back into your local or semi-local community at the same time.

Now this is just my opinion--please don't throw any zuchinni at me!
Debbie

Debbie, not to mention the fact that they are very expensive! Most are 98 cents or more for a single plant. At our local Amish greenhouse you can buy a flat of 4 or 6 plants at 99 cents per flat.

I do buy cabbage and broccoli from them @ Southern States. They're the only ones that have them early enough around here for a spring crop. Even these are a little pricey, I believe I paid $2.99 per 6 pack this year. They're also available at Southern States for the fall planting around the middle of August. No one else seems to carry them for the fall.

Gig Red--
I haven't seen 6 packs of veggies around here in a couple of years--rarely flowers either. The trend in the trade is to go up to those pots where than can get a buck something a pot. Its not the price that bothers me, its the quality and I'm not a big fan of big, corporate agri-business eithe; again, just my opinion.

I grow 90% of all my plants from seeds. The way I first got into it was because of the fall garden issues. Plants are widely available in spring--but only the serious gardeners plant for fall. Then they would put the fall tomato plants out too late for our area..frustrating. So when the plants started getting more expensive, I was OK.
Debbie

Bought 37 pepper plants(banana,bell) from Bonnie and they all seem to have the disease you are describing. Leaves are curling, wrinkled and turning yellow and falling off. I assumed the bout of cool wet weather got a disease going. I have been spraying with Ortho Garden disease Control, but does not seem to be helping much!

Do you all rotate crops in your gardens? Planting the same crop, in the same spot in the garden, year after year, almost always will result in bacterial/fungus/disease problems, eventually.

It could be Septoria lycopersici. Does the problem seem to spread upwards on the plant?

Do you plant disease-resistant cultivars?
.

Can't vouch for the others, but this was my first time planting anything in that spot. All six of my pepper plants (all Bonnie) developed the bacterial infection, yet the nearby tomatoes and eggplants did not develop the disease, which suggests that the disease was not already present in the soil. Also, the horticulturalist I showed the leaves to said that this particular bacterial disease was typically seedborn--meaning that Bonnie is selling plants that are already infected.

It was my first time planting peppers anything in that spot as it was a raised bed that had just been used for the first time.

When I returned everything to Lowe's the gardening manager told me they had to send a whole shipment back to Bonnie for this reason.

kanita

Good news on the types of (or lack of) crops planted in that area. =)

I only asked because it's a common "error" made in gardening (especially vegetables). I meant nothing bad towards anyone's gardening methods, when posting their problems. That's never my intent. I just try and cover all possible scenarios before "laying blame" or saying something is "fact". There's always a lot of possible factors when trying to identify a proble, such as the one described.

In this case, it could very well be a problem with the quality of plants from Bonnie's. But, I feel it's best to rule out *ANY* possible problems with my own, controllable conditions, before saying, "it's the plant's fault". If there's a problem with my soil, I wanna know right away, so I can cure it right away. ;)

Was the horticulturist in question able to put a name on the disease? It may be controllable without removing the plant, is why I ask.