Hi Zuby,

I've looked at your photo several times a day with that nagging feeling that I know I've seen this before but can't remember what it is. It is possible that at the time I saw it in person, I never did figure out at that time just what it was. I just kept thinking "this looks so familiar, and I should know what it is". For the life of me, though, after running through a long list of possibilities and ruling them out, what I have left is a couple of ideas about what it could be. I'm only guessing though.

This is a really unusual pepper issue, and one that I've only seen once before in my own garden. I don't know if I've ever seen a photo of a pepper with this problem online either. It was a very long time ago that I had a similar odd pepper in my garden and didn't look exactly the same as your does, but was similar enough in appearance that your photo looked familiar to me.

I think that it most likely is damage from cyclamen mites. See the link below. That's just my best guess. I also had considered silvering (but yours doesn't look silver and the silvering I've seen never has covered a very large portion of a pepper) and skin separation (Rutgers covers both of these pepper issues in some of their online info),

Mites by nature are tiny and often can do a lot of damage without a person ever even realizing they are present in the garden.

There's also a chance it might be an odd nutritional deficiency, but it doesn't resemble anything I've ever seen in any of the pepper disease/diagnostic publications.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Cyclamen mite damage on peppers

Thank you, Dawn! That definitely looks like the problem! Amazing you figured this out!
Amy

Amy,

You're welcome. I felt like the answer was trapped inside my brain and I couldn't get it to come out. I kept saying "I've seen this before....I've seen this". I'm relieved that I came up with an answer that seems to fit your pepper problem.

This is one of those odd pest problems that is incredibly rare in the home garden, and it is likely that neither your nor I ever will see this in our gardens again.

Dawn