This year I am growing two "fish" pepper plants. One is in a container, and the other in the ground in my community garden plot.

It was a pretty nasty year here for growing vegetables- cool weather for about 2 weeks (and it's going to get cool again this week) plus lots of clouds, etc. On top of that, I was not experienced with growing container plants. So the container plant was rather unhealthy and also malnourished until recently.

The Fish plant in the garden is still pretty pathetic looking; it is short, but it actually has set fruit, which is more than I can say for the one in the container.

One thing I noticed was that the container plant did not have variegated leaves (the hallmark of fish plants) until the weather heated up and I started fertilizing properly (I had both a) failed to give them fertilizer, then b) dosed the thing heavily with Miracle Gro at once, which probably shocked it with too much N). It also has 100% blossom drop until a day or two ago. But now the top leaves are variegated and there seems to be fruit set. THe plant in the garden is not variegated, but it actually has a number of small fruit on it. Funny thing is, the fruit sort of just looks like a short cayenne pepper- no striping etc. I think this is related to the nutritional/heat problems.

Has anyone else noticed that this plant does not look like it is supposed to if it is not happy and healthy? It's a fun variety, but it seems to need expert care and good growing conditions or you might as well not bother. Maybe next year I will start the seedlings much later so they don't get exposed to cool weather, and see if they look better then.