Hi I'm a beginning gardener. I am growing some peppers indoors to
transplant when it is warmer. As a practice I transplanted some of the
extra plants in to a window box (still inside) that was empty.

Some of the leaves on 5 out of seven plants are developing pale areas,
beggining on one side of veins and spreading outward to fill the space
between vanes. Some transplanted Parsleys also have it faintly on
their leaves. I scanned a picture, but frankly they look healthier
and greener in the scan than in real life. But you can see the whitish
line developing alongside one side of the large leaf's veins.

http://members.aol.com/royalef/leaves.jpg

I checked all the leaves, top and bottom. No residue, no sack or spots
on the leaves, undersides or the crotches of the shoots. I have put
the window box outside twice, edge of the porch so they could get some
direct sun. I think the areas developed after this.

My first guess was sunburn. The advice I read was to cut off all the
burnt leaves. Is that best? I have a corner porch (two walls, two open
sides). If i am trying to acclimate(sp?) a transplant for the outside
is a porch corner with no sunlight a good place to start? It might get
morning sun when it is low in the sky..

The other possibility was chlorosis--although the examples indicated
the whole leaf being pale green and veins a healthier green. On the
leaves where the pale whitish is most prominent the veins don't seem
to be excluded. I read Chlorosis is iron/magnesium deficiency(my
fertilizer has these). I also read it can be from hard water--which
has never been a problem here (north of NYC, NY, zone 6, only blocks
away from the Long Island Sound)

The only other thing I could guess was I'm not fertilizing
properly--which I'm sure I'm not. I was using a watersoluable 10-15-10
that was designed to be used lightly everytime you water. I've read so
much conflicting information about fertilizing once/month, once/week,
never on seedlings, that I need to sit down and restudy the topic in
general. I'm thinking of not using the schultz fertilizer because it
doesn't fit the conventional fertilizer recommendations. I used it at
first then stopped out of confusion from what I read. I do it every
other week now--which is lighter than recommended by the manufacturer.


Lastly, one of the plants has started to curl some on one leaf. If it
worsens that means a root issue, right? The soil definitely isn't
drying out, so i'm thinking more likely somethign like root rot. by
next week if that one doesn't improve I'll yank it to examine roots.(
i think i read they would be brown for root rot, although I don't
really recall ever seeing roots that weren't brown in my life)

Thanks for any advice.

DiGiTAL_ViNYL (no email)