What the heck is this?? cystal stuff under leaves?

Ok, well at first I thought this was some strange reaction to the Epsom salts, but I stopped spraying it, and it had only at first started on a few of the plants.. now it is worse, and the new leaves still continue to curl and get this buildup of what looks like a type of fungus or excretion of crystal stuff? I have no clue really, and I can't find anything on here about it.. I also don't think it was anything like mites or aphids because I've never ever had a problem with them even in the summer.. we just have too many ladybugs I guess... come spring they are all in the windows and stuff, which I am glad for now that I know what they do lol. and I have also been spraying an aphid/mites killer spray every few weeks just to make sure.. (and I bought it at first because I thought it would help kill the fruit flies) and if they are aphids, then I will just spray the crap out of them and hope it gets rid of them I guess, but it would be strange if that is what they were

so without delaying anymore.. can someone please please tell me what the heck this is, and what I can do to kill/stop it? They seem to be mostly affecting my habanero type plants (like Hottie Hybrid (a hab, cross from tomatogrowers.com, and the Congo trinidad, and maybe a Caribbean red, not sure)

Top leaf

It's called edema and it is from overwatering. Just back off a bit and It'll be fine. Good luck with your season.

Mike

good God that's gross, i'm gonna throw up! blahhh!

it's edema, very common, most pepper growers now own a "i'm an edema survivor" tee shirt.

you can do a google search or try a forum search. i just finished cleaning a plant with edema.

good luck

haha, ok well that makes me feel a lot better, (knowing that it is something I can easily fix), I had them in really heavy potting soil that had a vermiculite that was fine instead of course (which I had thought would help with drainage, but it being fine.. actually helped compact the soil)

so I had to re-pot all of them (all 14 in 1 gallon containers, and all 60 or so in party cups, lol only a week after re-potting them before with the bad soil.. long lesson to learn, but could have been worse)

I had just watered them a few days ago just because it seemed they were droopy, but I will water them a little less.. at least the ones that have the edema,


and Burning Colon, how did you clean a plant with endema.. because that is my initial reaction and urge, is to scrape all that crap off.. and if I can do that to help it along, I will

thanks guys.. I love this site haha, very helpful

Edema is like blisters from excess water, so just back off on watering and leave the plants be and the new growth should be pristine.

ok thanks, I was reading about it a little bit and a larger oscillating fan should help out with that a little right? I have been meaning to get one (and right now there is only a 6" blade, 8" grille fan in there now) but money has been tight, but with this, I am going to grab a little 16" fan tomorrow I think from walmart of lowes, it's pretty humid in there, but I will let them dry out before watering them

-thanks

Having extra airflow on the seedlings will give you several benefits such as keeping humidity and mold down and causing the seedlings' stems to become stronger and stockier.

Peppers don't like to be too wet...basically you should water again almost at the point where the seedlings will start to droop.

I just Got some on one of my plants as well. I also heard it can occur from poor drainage as well as poor air circulation. Mine was from excessive rain in the last couple of weeks.

ok thanks

and yea trippa I had some really compact soil in there before ,but I changed it all around and it is much much better now, but I only changed it last week and it is still had the edema and it was still really humid.. going to get an 18" oscillating fan in there today and get some actual circulation in there.

You don't need to create hurricane winds to fight off edema. Just quit watering so often. If the fan you have now is moving the plants with the airflow it's causing save your money for something else.

Good luck.

it only moves a few of the ones that it is closest too, it's not touching the other ones, it's pretty weak, and for a 6x6' tent, a 6" fan isn't good.. but yea I do understand that over watering is the problem, but especially since the plants are getting bigger I would like some better circulation since that other fan was ok when they were in the shelves, but only give a slight breeze to about 3-4 plants in the fist row

just because you can't see it doesn't mean its not moving the air, use some smoke to see if theres any stagnation

Turns out I have exact same fan as Max. It's okay for one 4-ft shelf, but you'd need more for multiple shelves in an enclosure like his. I like the fan to rattle the plants around a bit. A smoke test might be okay, I guess....

yea I went out and bought a 18" fan (smallest fan I could find that had good ratings), and for $25.. I couldn't beat the price.. it is a little much as far as power, and I might actually use my snakes dimmer for his heat mat and use it as a fan speed controller and lower the speed a little bit but it really helps move the air around a little bit, I still have the 6" fan in there too, and I just moved it over to where the smaller plants are (the top right corner in my avatar) but I might take that back out and use it on the shelves again when I plant my other 20 seeds of the plants that I didn't get to plant yet or didn't come out in the numbers I wanted..

the air in there was just really humid and muggy I guess, which is nice, but I think for a fan with 6" blades, a 6x6x6' area is a little too much.. I dono, it just felt much better with the other fan in there..

and! on a good note I checked the plants again when setting up the fan and the edema on the bottom of the leaves have reduced a lot, I was actually really surprised how much they declined just from last night.

here is a video of the grow room with the fans on, it was keeping the temp too far down, and I am trying to conserve as much energy as possible, but still trying to play around with setups that will allow me to just forget about everything and just water the plants when they are needed, so I just switched the larger fan to come on when the temp reaches 84-85 which is should when the light is on (it should get to about 85-86 normally right under the light where the probes are and so this way it will come on when the tent has warmed up enough, and it can move some air around and then let it rise back up again, and I have the small fan on one of those manual timers that come with those HID light kits) I have my light on a surge protector timer that you can see in the corner behind the fan

so I am pretty happy with the setup now, the plants look good, and some are still recovering from 2 weeks ago when I had really compact soil that wouldn't drain and they were way over watered

I definitely started out too early this year lol, don't know what I am going to do when I have to re-pott all those plants that are in party cups, I should be able to find almost all of them in the 6x6 tent, but I will have to put them on the floor and get rid of the tables, but this year I am just trying things out and getting a feel for everything, next year I will have a good idea of what to do.

(the first attempt of this, my lens fogged right up lol, and it is still a little foggy, but oh well, and not sure if you can hear me or not over the fans, but it doesn't matter I was mumbling anyways)
I was trying to get it to play on the site without having to go somewhere else, but I can't work out how to do it with youtube, so oh well.. it doesn't really matter

Are those tomatoes in there? If they are for planting outside you are waaaaaaaay early for CT....they are going to be really big by May, maybe even ripening tomatoes already.

lol, yea I know, my mom got excited for planting my pepper plants and she ended up planting hers.. I have a little mini greenhouse I think it is 6x3 or 4' that I was going to use this spring, so once it gets a little warmer out, like in march (if it is warm like it has been, as long as it stays above 50-55 at night maybe) I will put them out there.. and if it doesn't stay warm like it has been (40-50 out lately, which is crazy) I will just set it up in my basement and put some of the emergency blankets I have in there to reflect the light and use the LED light I have to light them..

but yea I know this year it is really early, even for those 14 pepper plants it is a little early, but those are manageable, the tomatoes get a tad bigger really fast lol but oh well, having fun with it, it's funny that those tomatoes were planted at the same time all my little pepper plants were, but some are not doing that well because my mom wasn't use to tomato seeds that actually do well, and she had trouble handeling the seeds and she had like 3-4 seeds per jiffy pellet thing, so the roots got torn up a little on the ones that were really compacted together, but they are recovering, just dropped a few leaves

Meh just pinch off a couple buds and keep them toward the outside of your light radius and they should slow down growth. Then you can pick em right back up by blasting them with light in May.

Also make sure it's not too humid in there. Humidity can make edema worse too. Peppers like to sweat a bit and they can't if it's too humid.

mrz1988 said:

Meh just pinch off a couple buds and keep them toward the outside of your light radius and they should slow down growth. Then you can pick em right back up by blasting them with light in May.

Also make sure it's not too humid in there. Humidity can make edema worse too. Peppers like to sweat a bit and they can't if it's too humid.

Click to expand...

yea that is what I was thinking, once those other peppers get bigger (the ones in the party cups) and I need to put them into 1 gallon containers I am going to be putting them towards the side of the tent.. and by then everything will be pretty packed tightly, and because they will be on the floor, the temp will be slightly lower (85 now with the light on right under the light where the plants soil is..and on the floor it is around 73, so should be around 75-80 on the floor when I take the tables out and move everything into 1 gallon containers) and I think the fact that with everything so bunched together they will be getting less light anyways which will slow down their growth


and it is really humid in there.. and I just got that fan to reduce it, which makes a big difference, but I think hooking it up to the temp gauge isn't what I need to do.. so when I get my other HID kit in by the end of the week, I am going to use that manual timer (which I like, it comes with most of the HID kits sold anywhere) and I am going to keep the small fan set to about 15min every hour.. and set the large fan to 15min every.. 2 or 3 hours maybe? not sure yet.. probably 2 hours.. or maybe 30min per 3 hours would be good

So, an update, they were doing really well last week, and they were bone dry, like really super dry, so I gave them a little water, and the Edema came back with a vengeance, and started to affect the smaller plants of the same species.. so my dad who does "going green" type of insulation and stuff like that had a little humidity (among other things) meter but point being that even with the larger fan in there which seemed to make it better.... it was still 99% humidity with a dew point of 71 degrees


so now I took the other timer I got with the HID light and set it last night for my inline exhaust fan to go on for 30min twice during the night and 3 times during the day for 15min or so.. and by 4pm today, there was no more moisture on the walls, and no more puddles on the ground of the tent lol.. I haven't yet measured it, but even from last night running it for an hour, it brought it down to 85% humidity, so now I set the exhaust fan to go on for 15min 4 times a day to help circulate the air and get all that moisture out.. and already the plants look much better than they did yesterday.. so I will once again let them dry out completely and give them a tiny bit of water and keep the fan set to what it is so the humidity is lower and allows the leaves to breathe better.. should be good now