Is it getting overheadwatering? Or flood or drip at the base? Do you know what variety of bell pepper it is?

Why minimal watering?. Can you grow them outside we need a greenhouse to get any success at all.....

It mainly gets watered @ the base either by humans or via rain. It's just your generic green bell pepper, and we water it minimally as the leaves are turning/falling off, so thought it may be a form of blackspot that roses get!

The fist things that I would have thought of are Phytopthora or Botrytis rots, and both are made worse by overhead watering, including constant rain. Another possibility would be Verticillium and/or Fusarium wilt diseases, which are soil bourne, but curable with a dose of Streptomyces lydicus, a fungus that eats other fungi. You might want to google these, and see if any match the damage you have.

Thanks Tugbrethil! Do you think perhaps a small spray of fungicide which we've been using for black spot on roses would help?! It's rained on and off in NJ, nothing out of the ordinary, and we did like a fellow gardener said: Plant right @ soil level (don't sink the plant in the earth), and put them in full sun, but NOT in the area where we mixed manure in the soil. This has happened consistently the past 6-7 years ... getting rather frustrating! Then-n-n, if we DO get peppers, they're almost stunted and not the size you see in supermarkets! We also do not feed any of our plants; should we try some fertilizer, even though we're primarily "organic"?