Why Are My Pepper Plants Turning Yellow?
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One of the most common issues when growing peppers is a discoloration of the leaves. One of the most popular questions we get is: Why are my pepper plants turning yellow? There are a few possible reasons for yellowing pepper plant leaves, and thankfully, it is usually fixable.
In this article, I will share how to diagnose your plant’s issue, and how to solve the problem of yellowing pepper leaves!
So, why are my pepper plants turning yellow?
The most common cause of pepper leaves turning yellow is a nutrient deficiency, typically nitrogen. The lack of nutrition for the plant causes the leaves to lose their green color, usually starting at the base of the plant and moving upwards over time.
Another possible cause of pepper plants turning yellow is inconsistent watering. Over-watering can cause stress to your pepper plants, causing leaves to turn yellow, stunted growth, and lower pepper production.
Finally, extreme temperatures can cause pepper leaves to die and fall off, turning yellow in the process. This is especially common in colder weather below 50Ā°F.
These issues can also cause yellow leaves on other plants, including tomatoes, eggplants, and many other garden veggies. Now, let’s go through the most common causes, how to diagnose, and how to treat each of them.
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1. Nitrogen Deficiency
Nitrogen is an essential nutrient for all vegetative plant growth. It is what helps grow big, strong plants with lots of healthy green leaves. Without enough nitrogen, your pepper plants will suffer in a number of ways. One of the first symptoms of this deficiency is yellowing leaves.
Do my peppers need nitrogen?
There is an easy way to know if your plant needs more nitrogen. The yellowing leaves will start at the bottom of your pepper plant, and move upwards over time. The reason for this is that nitrogen is a “mobile nutrient,” meaning that the plant can move nitrogen from one location to another.
When your plant is running low on nitrogen, it will begin to move the remaining supply from the older leaves upwards toward the newer growth. You will see that larger, older leaves at the bottom of the plant will turn yellow first.
Another sign that it is nitrogen and not another nutrient is that leaves will turn entirely yellow, including the leaf veins. If you notice the veins remaining green while the rest of the leaf is yellowing, it may be another nutrient to blame (likely magnesium or iron).
Without treatment, the yellow leaves may fall off eventually, while the top leaves will remain green for longer. Learn more about nutrient deficiencies in plants here.
Symptoms:
- Yellowing leaves, starting at the bottom of the plant and moving up
- Leaves falling off
- Stunted plant growth
- Flowers falling off
How to add nitrogen
The easiest way to add nitrogen to your plants is to fertilize. Fertilizer is almost always necessary for an ideal pepper garden, especially in potted plants. With an active nutrient deficiency, I suggest using a liquid fertilizer to instantly feed your plants.
Generally, potted plants should be fertilized every 1-2 weeks, while in ground soil should be amended before planting with slow-release nutrients. I also like to side dress with slow release fertilizer 2-3 times during the season to promote continual growth all season long.
Starting a fertilizing regimen will undoubtedly help your plants grow stronger. However, leaves that have already turned yellow will not turn back to green. Focus on the new growth instead. Learn more about how we fertilize our pepper plants here.
2. Watering Stress
Watering peppers too much or too little can cause major stress to your plant. Water is an essential ingredient for your plant’s success, but getting the amount right is important.
With pepper plants, you want to water just enough to keep the soil moist, but not soaking wet. Whether you are growing in pots or in the ground, make sure there is good drainage. If all of the water is trapped around the root system, the roots can become water-logged and potentially develop rot.
Poor drainage causes an inability for your plants to access oxygen which can cause serious problems. This includes yellowing leaves, but can also lead to overall smaller plants and even death.
On the other hand, pepper plants don’t like to be completely dried out. If you notice that your leaves are wilting before every watering, you may want to start watering a bit more frequently. For example, peppers require significantly more water when the weather is hot.
Check on your peppers daily and feel the soil for moisture. If you are growing in pots, lift the pot to feel its weight. You will get a sense of how heavy a well-watered plant feels, and how a dried out plant feels. If it is feeling light, probably time to water!
Watering tip: It is much better to water deeply and infrequently than shallowly and often. Slow, deep, and infrequent watering encourages a larger, deeper root system that can access water deeper underground.
You can also use a water meter like this one on Amazon. This device is affordable and tells you the approximate amount of water in your soil. It also measures pH levels (though how well it does this is debated).
Learn more about watering pepper plants in our dedicated article here.
3. Cold Weather and Dying Leaves
Another common cause of yellow pepper plant leaves is abnormally cold weather. Peppers originate from a warm, tropical climate. As the growing season comes to a close and fall is setting in, your plants may stress with the temperature changes.
If nighttime temperatures dip below 50Ā°F, pepper leaves may begin to turn yellow and fall off. This is a natural response by the plant to enter a hibernation state. If temperatures drop below 40Ā°F, you will see a significant drop in leaves, and below 32Ā°F will kill most pepper plants.
If temperature is to blame, the yellow leaves will be randomly spread around the pepper plant with no particular locations more affected than others. This is one way to know it is temperature-related and not a nutrient deficiency.
4. Other Nutrient Deficiencies
While nitrogen is the most common deficiency, it is possible that your pepper plants are turning yellow because of another. Magnesium and calcium are both important plant nutrients that may be lacking.
Magnesium
Magnesium is another nutrient that is required for healthy pepper plants. While it is less common in soil-based gardening, it can still occur. Leaves will turn yellow, starting at the bottom of the plant (just like nitrogen). However, if you look closely, you will notice that the veins of your leaves will remain green, while the flesh will be pale yellow. This is known as inter-veinal chlorosis, and is the main way to distinguish a magnesium deficiency from nitrogen.
Calcium
Calcium plays a vital role in building strong cell walls in plants and fruiting bodies. It also helps plants better absorb other nutrients. According to this study, it also aids in expanding the main root systems of plants. It is less common to see this deficiency, but it is marked by curled leaves and often brown spots on the leaves.
Treating other deficiencies
I recommend using an all-purpose fertilizer that includes calcium and magnesium, especially for potted plants. For in-ground growth, get a soil test to know what may be missing in your soil, and whether the soil pH is in the optimal zone for pepper plant growth.
Pepper Leaves Yellow Even After Fertilizing
While nutrient deficiency is a common cause for yellowing pepper plant leaves, fertilizing may not appear to solve your problem. If you have determined that it is not caused by one of the issues listed above, what could be the problem?
One potential cause is that once leaves have turned yellow, fertilizer will not change them back to green. Fertilizing will help new growth remain healthy, but yellowed leaves will remain yellow. Another possible cause is water stress.
If you have been fertilizing since the beginning, and are still seeing yellow leaves, then your plants may have difficulty using the nutrients. Different fertilizers contain different types of nutrients. Some are water-soluble, while others are not.
If your soil’s pH is too acidic or overly alkaline, your pepper plants will not be able to use certain nutrients in the soil, even if they are present. Every few years, I send a soil sample away for a professional soil test. This tells us what is in our soil and how to amend it to reach ideal nutrient and pH levels.
Type of fertilizer
In addition to all-purpose fertilizers, Iwill often supplement with this fertilizer for our potted pepper plants. It has a natural source of water-soluble nitrogen, which may help the plants take in and use it more effectively.
I hope this article helps you diagnose why your pepper plants are turning yellow. Pepper plants will give you all sorts of warning signals when they are unhappy, and yellowing leaves is just another sign. Thankfully, there are easy solutions to this problem. Good luck!
Calvin
One of the original Pepper Geeks! When Calvin isn’t gardening or learning more about peppers and botany, he might be traveling new places or playing some music.
Hi I live in central California where we are currently going through a heat wave. Temps are 105-110 during the day. Would this be a cause of some of my pepper plants getting yellowed leaves? One of my best plants earlier in the season was a Carolina reaper in a 12 gallon pot and I feel like I’m fertilizing it pretty well. But since the temps have gotten to this level it’s starting to look yellow and all the flowers are dropping. It gets roughly 9-10 hours of direct sun light. I also have a couple plants that I transplanted into raised beds that are starting to experience the same symptoms. Would the main culprit be too high of temps and too much sun?
What if the fruit sites have turned yellow, there is a general yellow hue in the leaves, but not fully yellow, but the fruit sites like nearly overnight turned yellowing on many of my pepper plants
If the fruits are turning yellow, it could be due to overwatering. If they go soft, this may be the issue. If they are banana peppers, they may naturally turn yellow before eventually ripening to red, etc.
What is the best fertilizer for peppers?
Hi, so I am growing Shinshito peppers and bought them from the seed.
they have started growing and I had noticed one of the plants was bright yellow
it seems to be fine with none of the leaves wilting and it still growing.
Do you have any idea on what this could be
Background: Iām growing rocoto peppers indoors in grow bags under an Atreum Hydra 3200 LED grow light. Coming back from a 10-day vacation for a little over a month ago, I found my plants suffering from a white fly and caterpillar infestation. After fixing the insect problem with sticky flay traps and BT and neem oil-Castile soap sprays, I have been fertilizing the peppers with their weekly waterings. The fertilizer is 30-10-10 and I also mix in a little Epsom salt.
Issue: I get beautiful, young green leaves from the nodes only to have them turn yellow and drop when theyāre between 0.5-2ā long. As a result, the plants are struggling to make a comeback. The yellowing usually occurs on young leaves near the top of the canopy.
Any thoughts on what could be causing this type of yellowing? Any ideas of how to fix the issue? Thanks in advance for your help.
Do you have a Video on the leaves of Pepper plants?
I was given three different plants by a friend with no peppers on them. But was told they are Pepper plants. So how does one tell, whats they are?
Thank you love yor site!
Try this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsywYeznsvQ
Hi!
One of my most thriving plant is a ghost pepper. One issue I am facing: bottom leaves turned yellow (the whole leave, so I thought it was nitrogen deficiency). Started a scheduled fertilizing regime, instead of randomly: every two weeks with Yates bone lifter (NPKCaS 2.6:0.4:1.4:0.4:0.6). But then I ended up with brown spots on the leaves (looked like too much nitrogen) and still experience new yellow leaves at the bottom… Anyone any idea? Too much or too little nitrogen or anything else?
Thanks!
Hm, it could be cold weather if you are in a climate like ours. Late in the season leaves turn yellow naturally. Also, it is pretty common to see low leaves turn yellow simply due to age. The oldest leaves are often the first to drop naturally. Sounds like your plants are okay to me
@peppergeek, thanks!
Forgot to mention that I am located in Australia. Still, you are probably right that it could be 100% normal š
Hi, I have been hardening off my pepper plants slowly each day. Over the past 2-3 days the leaves at the top turn completely yellow (chlorosis) after a few hours. Last night as a last minute measure I sprayed the yellow leaves with a dilute epsom salts solution and some of the green has come back.
Any idea what is happening and what I should do?
Thanks for all of your awesome videos!
Hey there, hm that is a strange one. Never seen the top leaves turning yellow so quickly. However, we have seen some chlorosis after transplanting as the plants adjust, but after a few weeks the plants always adjust and new foliage looks green. I would just give them a bit to get used to all the changes!
I planted green red and yellow bell peppers from starts 5 days ago in a raised bed. It has been raining here and it is cool– 40-45F at night. Today the green pepper plant’s leaves are turning white/yellow and look like they will fall off. The soil was moist and loamy when planted. Peppers were in this bed last year and they did great.
I watered the plants when I put them in but not since. Should I leave them and hope they recover or take them out and keep them in a warmer place until cool water passes- then replant? Any suggestion on the problem?
They will likely survive, but will definitely perk up in warmer weather. It may be more trouble than it is worth to dig them up just to wait a couple weeks at this point. You could use some thin cloth to protect from the cold, and mulch around the base of the plants to prevent the roots from getting too cold. Next time, wait until temps are consistently above 55Ā°F at night!
I have had trouble with one specific kind of pepper (out of dozens) — Hawaiian Sweet. They drop leaves from the top down, and turn yellow from the veins inwards, with some dark brown spots. Seems kind of backwards from a number of the other conditions mentioned. I’ve had this problem two years in a row about this time of year when I first planted them in the ground, though ones still in pots don’t look so good either (last year I grew a remedial batch during summer, and they did OK). I suspect a deficiency that this particular cultivar needs a lot of, but not sure which one; or possibly some weird combination of temperature, pH, and nutrients.
A follow-up — in the last two years, I’ve found that peppers from tropical islands (Hawaiian lowlands, Trinidad, Tobago) tend to be far more sensitive to cool temperatures than those grown in temperate and mainland areas. When I grow these peppers, I start them late and they are fine, but there are otherwise similar varieties that can put outside a lot sooner and are a lot more productive in a temperate climate. Some of these will continue growing pods until finally killed by a hard frost. Of course ripening is much slower in cool weather, and the pods tend to be more tangy/sour and less sweet — not always negative, as tanginess in peppers comes primarily from Vitamin C.
My new growth on peppers in 3 inch pots are turning yellow !
I have Miracle Gro Performance Organics. Is there a certain point in the season when I should change fertilizer or stop altogether?
I was reading Miracle Gro is not enough and to add some epsom salts to the ground or Neptuneās Harvest. Probably a Ph test to determine which.
All of my pepper seedlings after transplanting to 3″ pots were turning yellow and leaves dropping. Since they were young plants, it wasn’t a nitrogen problem. I checked the pH and found the ProMix potting mix pH was 4.5. The plants recover when I plant them outside in the garden. This year I will select a different potting media.
Wow! That is good to know, 4.5 is too acidic. Thanks for sharing.
Did you measure the water coming out of the soil? Do you have a baseline on the pH of your water from the tap? I wouldn’t say ProMix has acidic soil. That has never been my experience with them. Just trying to help you figure out the real problem. If you water with acidic water, it’s going to turn your soil acidic.
Dear Sir / Madam.
Hello there.
Hope all is well at your end.
I am growing the green colour variety of capsicum or bell peppers in Tanzania.
I am facing some challenges and would appreciate to have some ideas from in order to face them and get a good quality yield and good quality capsicum at the same time.
The challenges are as follows:
1.) In some of the plants the fruits are becoming red and getting spoilt or rotten.
2.) The leaves of some of the plants are folding upwards and have become light green.
3.) The leaves of some plants have some brown spots on them.
4.) Most of the fruits are small.
5.) Most of the fruits are light green and have been affected by sun scald.
6.) I picked the fruit twice but the production is small as most of the fruit is either small or rotten.
I would really appreciate if you could advise me o how to overcome the above challenges in order to get a good yield and good quality fruit.
Looking forward to hearing from you very soon.
Thanks.
With best regards.
Wow, that is a complicated set of symptoms and I’m guessing from your location that you have very different constraints than I have in a much colder climate.
Leaves folding curling upwards at the edges would imply not enough water or being root-bound (if in a container); but whole leaves slanting up implies insufficient light which is kind of the opposite. Fruit turning red or rotting implies they were already ripe and should have been picked sooner — you might want to try growing smaller varieties of peppers (not bell peppers) as they are much easier to grow to maturity. I find bell peppers not worth growing because the fruits take forever to grow and ripen and one little mishap ruins the fruit — the odds are much better with a variety that can grow many smaller peppers, which have more taste anyways. I’d suggest one of the many narrower red peppers like “Jimmy Nardello” or”Portugal” (which taste great and are much easier to grow) or something like “Anaheim” which are shorter and have good taste when still green.
Sunscald on the fruits implies too much sun — some part shade (whether natural or sunshades) could help — I have had good results with peppers in part sun. Some of your other symptoms suggest you may not have enough nutrients in the soil.
Awesome!! Great info!!
I would like perhaps mention one other culprit… As Fall sets in, days are shorter, & temps fall off we have noticed the yellowing of leaves on both Cayenne & Tabasco plants equally. All 5 pots of Tabasco & 2 pots of Cayenne. It’s fair in our case that we are near the end of the growing season. -Thanks!
@David Jones,
Another problem I’ve seen is running out of nitrogen late in the season. You might see “nitrogen scavenging”, where lower, more shaded leaves turn yellow and drop off, while the top of the plant is prioritized and looks OK for longer. Of course reduced light conditions will also worsen this condition.