I'm growing chillis, peppers and tomatoes in my greenhouse. Lately, a
mould has started appearing, initially on the dead flower petals around
newly set fruit on the pepper plants but now it's spreading to the
nearby tomatoes. Does anyone know what it is, and is there anything I
can do about this other than removing affected pieces of plant when I
see them?

Rhiannon

On Sun, 11 Sep 2005 16:42:49 +0100, Rhiannon Macfie Miller
wrote:

I'm growing chillis, peppers and tomatoes in my greenhouse. Lately, a
mould has started appearing, initially on the dead flower petals around
newly set fruit on the pepper plants but now it's spreading to the
nearby tomatoes. Does anyone know what it is, and is there anything I
can do about this other than removing affected pieces of plant when I
see them?

Rhiannon

It's probably grey mould (botrytis (sp?)). I always find that peppers
and tomatoes are particularly prone.

Usual advice is to ensure good ventilation and remove all infected
plants. The problem is that providing good ventilation now will just
lower your greenhouse temperature preventing growth.

However it seems a little bit late to be harvesting either of those I
have already removed most foliage from the tomatoes and would expect
to be harvesting the last of them and peppers in the next couple of
weeks so if you have flowers or fruit that is just setting now then
don't worry about removing them it's almost certainly too late for
them to develop usable fruit, it's just too late in the year and going
to be too cold and dark for them to do their stuff.

JB

JB wrote:

Usual advice is to ensure good ventilation and remove all infected
plants. The problem is that providing good ventilation now will just
lower your greenhouse temperature preventing growth.

However it seems a little bit late to be harvesting either of those I
have already removed most foliage from the tomatoes and would expect
to be harvesting the last of them and peppers in the next couple of
weeks so if you have flowers or fruit that is just setting now then
don't worry about removing them it's almost certainly too late for
them to develop usable fruit, it's just too late in the year and going
to be too cold and dark for them to do their stuff.

Ack. A concatenation of circumstances (moving house, followed by the
seeds I ordered being sent to the old address) meant that I was very
late in getting the seeds sown. So they're only just now beginning to
set, and none of them are approaching ripe yet. We were planning on
taking them into the conservatory when it started getting cold. Is that
not viable?

Rhiannon

Rhiannon Macfie Miller wrote:
Ack. A concatenation of circumstances (moving house, followed by the
seeds I ordered being sent to the old address) meant that I was very
late in getting the seeds sown. So they're only just now beginning to
set, and none of them are approaching ripe yet. We were planning on
taking them into the conservatory when it started getting cold. Is that
not viable?

Rhiannon,

You might be lucky and get whatever crop is there already to ripen with
a move to the conservatory.

Peppers are actually perennial if kept warm enough over winter, I've
tried it once in my cold conservatory - they dropped all their leaves
but did live through the winter, and went on to have a so-so summer the
year after.

Its got to be worth a try - certainly I'm planning on shifting my
peppers and chillis into the conservatory very soon to try and extend
the cropping by a few weeks.

Sarah