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Crinkly and falling leaves, guesses on problem?

EliteMcScruffin

EliteMcScruffin

Seems like for weeks I've been having a problem on about half my plants where the leaves are very ripply/crinkly.  Thought it was overwatering even though others that get the same water didn't have the same issue.  For all I know this still is the problem.  Also the last week or so I have been getting a TON of leaves dropping from a few of my plants, especially the Brain Strain and Carolina Reaper.
 
Brain Strain
brain strain.jpg

 
Carolina Reaper
reaper.jpg

 
I noticed on the other reaper not pictured that some bug has gone to town on a few of the leaves in the past day or so.  Need to spray some pyrethrin since I haven't in over a month.
 
Any suggestions on improving the health of these guys is appreciated!
 
Fertilizer burn progressing. Flush as well as you can with water, and don't use as much (or as frequent) fertilizer as you've been using. I'm not sure if you're growing in bags or if they're in the ground , but know that if you bought potting or garden soil with nutes already in it, sometimes the manufacturer puts enough nutes in to burn the plants without your adding any. 
 
To be honest, in the 3 months they've been out in the fabric pots they have only seen a very minor dose of Biothrive grow about 2 months ago and then about a month ago a minor (half the bottle instructions) dose of Alaska fish fertilizer about a month ago. I thought it was fertilizer too but being a little over a month since my last application and I water every 2 or 3 days until water comes out the bottom (temps are mid to upper nineties most days around here) I started thinking that wasn't it. The leaf drop has only really gone crazy the last week or two as well.
 
Lower leaves yellowing, and dropping, usually indicates over watering.  No yellowing in the photos.
 
Any idea what the bug is?
 
No clue on the bug... I'll take a pic of one of the chewed up leaves in case that could help someone else to identify anything. I do see a certain bug on the stems all the time that I haven't been able to identify but didn't think they were causing the problem. I'll snap a pic of them also and see if someone else knows what they are.
 
I had the same thing happen to my reapers.  It was doing fine then all of a sudden all the leaves turn yellow and fall.  Anything stressful happen to them recently?  I found that when we had a heat wave the plant got naked.  Seems like the superheats, the reaper especially drops leaves very easy and for any reason.  A lot of people posting about leaf drop are reaper owners. 
 
I have several Red Hot Portugal's that did the same. Now some are getting new leaves only at the top......My reapers are doing great as I moved them out of the direct sun for now
 
Emald001 said:
I had the same thing happen to my reapers.  It was doing fine then all of a sudden all the leaves turn yellow and fall.  Anything stressful happen to them recently?  I found that when we had a heat wave the plant got naked.  Seems like the superheats, the reaper especially drops leaves very easy and for any reason.  A lot of people posting about leaf drop are reaper owners. 
Click to expand...
 
The Brain Strain is the one that was having the most leaf drop... like 30% of the leaves over the course of the week last week.  We have had a very uncharacteristic wet streak where it has rained almost every day for about 10 days now.  I'm using fabric pots though, so I don't think it's possible for them to be over watered unless they are sitting in flooded/standing water.
 
Aside from that there hasn't really been anything different recently.  It has been quite hot daily but that's normal for this region.

So, I took these pictures yesterday but didn't get on THP at all until just now to update.
 
I went out yesterday morning early on to take the pictures of the reaper that had some holes in a few leaves from some unknown bug or pest as promised, but when I got out there I was shocked to see 90% of the leaves completely missing (not on the ground like with my "normal" leaf drop):
 
stripped reaper.jpg

 
After taking that picture I noticed what looked like a curled leaf with eggs planted on it.  I was cursing to myself as I got closer and changed angles a bit and noticed it wasn't quite a leaf:
 
horned caterpillar 1.jpg

 
This little turd was apparently quite hungry over the course of the night.
 
Here's a better shot of what I understand to be the horned caterpillar:
 
horned caterpillar 2.jpg

 
It was quite big, so I took one more shot with my hand out to the side of it for size reference:
 
horned caterpillar 3.jpg

 
Man that little **** started my day off wonderfully.  A minute or two after these pics were taken it was coated in pyrethrin (Fox Farms Don't Bug Me) and began to suffer like it made me.  I checked back on it about 20 minutes later and it was nowhere to be found, so I assume some bird got fat off of it.  No idea whether pyrethrin is toxic to birds, but after finding they have been boring holes in my paprika that was so close to being ripe and ready to pick, I couldn't give a damn whether they die or not.  About to start picking the winged source of stress off but will try a fake owl first to appease the woman.
 
Yep, I just pulled one of those buggers off one of my plants last night. Guess I have to go hunting this morning.
 
First year I grew peppers [60 plants in pots] I had an invasion of wicked hornworms. Boy do they EAT. I didn't come up with a solution that season and have since had growing seasons without them! All I did was check for them multiple times a day and relocated them. Killing them would have been more effective but that seemed wrong to me. On the plus side the plants put out new growth quickly once they are nice and established. Of course it pushes pod ripening back :(
 
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