Just noticed my pepper plants have purple stems.....

aliasojo

I'm about to move my pepper plants and I've picked off dead flowers and any leaves that were eaten by beasties, but I see the stems (where new branches join the main stem) are purple.

I also have one tiny fruit forming but it looks mottled with brown blotches.

I've had to get rid of all my tomato plants due to blight. Has it affected my peppers now too?

Apart from the purple colour and the one brownish baby fruit forming, the plants look fine.

RAS

The purple colour is fine - a lot of plants contain a gene that expresses itself as purple in leaves, stems, seed pods etc including potatoes, beans and peas IME.

Leif

What RAS said. It is quite common to see purple stems and pods. I think it is a reaction to direct sunlight. My Rocoto had purple pods, rather than green.

aliasojo

Leif wrote: »

What RAS said. It is quite common to see purple stems and pods. I think it is a reaction to direct sunlight. My Rocoto had purple pods, rather than green.

I think I may have picked off a healthy baby fruit. What looked brown and mottled was actually purple, turning green.

There is another very small purple one growing so I'll leave it and see what happens.

Leif

aliasojo wrote: »

I think I may have picked off a healthy baby fruit. What looked brown and mottled was actually purple, turning green.

There is another very small purple one growing so I'll leave it and see what happens.

At the risk of stating the obvious, you can eat green chillis. Regarding the new one, it will grow to full size then turn red, or whatever the ripe colour of your pods is.