Mold Prevention Inside Peppers - Especially Habaneros

[Dave2000]

A small percentage of my Red Habaneros have had mold inside the fruit. Fluffy dark gray mold on the placenta around the seeds. Maybe 5% of the normal sized fruit do, or 50% of those which had stunted size (only a minority had stunted fruit growth per plant). It's been happening all season with each round I pick as they ripen, not just now at the end of the growing season. None were left sitting on the plant to rot, were promptly picked once they fully ripened.

I have several different types of other peppers in the same row and none of them have any mold besides ALL the red hab plants. All the types of peppers have essentially same plastic pots, same soil mix (was actually all in same mixing trough before separated into pots for everything), same watering and fertilizer, planted at same time, etc. No mold or bugs visible on plant itself or soil.

Is there something in particular I missed that Red Habaneros need to be 100% mold free like the other peppers? Otherwise the plants look healthy, good growth and color and fruit production. No breaks in walls of fruit or stems. It just seems strange that only the red habs have any fruit with mold inside yet look perfect outside.

 

[hoodat]

Any damage to the pepper that lets air and moisture inside will cause this. There are several critters that bore tiny holes into the pepper, some so small they are hard to see, but anything that opens the pepper up will cause it, especially in rainy weather. It is also possible that some of your peppers are cracking at the stem, caused by very hot weather.

 

[Warthog]

Haven't got the answer to your mold problem. But a little tip I was given here when I grew some Habeneros, was when you pick them leave the stalk on, they last longer.

 

[Dave2000]

I examined them and saw nothing different on the outside about the ones that molded... but if the critters boring in are too small to see, maybe the hole would be too if at the bloom end.

Good tip about leaving the stem on, I find they start shriveling within a couple days here if I pick it off early, but it's pretty dry inside this summer due to running A/C pretty regularly.

I didn't see any stem cracking but we did have a hot summer for this region, but not sure that means much... in this region that only means 2-3 months straight of 90-95F highs. We were far far under our month over month rainfall expectations, so I ended up watering every 24 hours or so just to keep them from wilting.

The strangest part to me was that it's only red habs and mostly only the undersized ones. I suppose that implies it is a cracked stem that dwarfed growth, at first I thought they were just small because they were on the new outer extremities of the plant but other new peppers adjacent to them are full sized.

 

[hoodat]

It could be your plants are letting some of them wither because it has all it can handle at the time. If the plant stops feeding them they will wither away.

 

[Dave2000]

That may be what happened till I stepped up my watering cycle but that was right after the first of the hot spell and more than two months later all new peppers since then have had about the same ratio of good to moldy. I suspect it's probably the split stems, we've had some unusually large gusts of wind this summer considering how little rain we had... around here the two usually go hand in hand.