Habanero Trouble

[Garth Vader]

Hello all,

I'm relatively new to gardening and planted some peppers in 2 and 3 gallon pots in my backyard in Houston, TX. My serrano plants and jalapeno plants are all looking healthy, but my habanero plant keeps dropping its leaves.

The leaves look otherwise healthy and not munched on or anything and the plants are still sprouting new leaves so I doubt its a soil problem. They turn yellow and just fall off. That leads me to believe that this is some sort of pest problem. I remember reading about some sort of bug that bores into the stems and sucks the juices out so that the leaves die but I can't remember what it's called or how to stop it.

I'd like to take care of this problem using as few chemicals as possible seeing as I plan to eat peppers from this plant in the future. Thanks in advance for any advice you guys have.

[pharmerphil]

what did you use as a potting medium?
sounds like it could be 2 things..
Drainage ..In containers you need a good potting mix
Temperature..Ok, an example..
If, you have your young pepper seedlings in a pot or tray, and they are a Warm 80°
then, you put them in their containers (or garden soil) and they seem to NOT DO A THING...except have yellowing leaves...then it's the temperature diffrence

Our's are started with bottom heat, then after they germinate, the plants are kept at about 60°
When we set them out, the ground temps are at 60°
If the soil/ground temps are below 60, we get that "stall", although not severe enough to yellow them, they do nothing for a week or so.

Yellowing at this stage could be a fertilizer problem too...if you fed them. OR
If you used one of those potting soils with fertilizer in it, it may have been Too Much-Too soon for your baby plants...hope this helps