• Do you need help identifying a 🌶?
    Is your plant suffering from an unknown issue? 🤧
    Then ask in Identification and Diagnosis.

Is this calcium deficiency??

blueapplepaste

blueapplepaste

First time grower here.

All my peppers seem to have stalled out a little lately. New growth is crazy wrinkled and hasnt grown much bigger than whats seen here (see photo) and flowers are dropping after blooming on other areas of plants that are grown out. From reading on the interwebs, it looks like calcium deficiency to me. But not sure.

We have had crazy temp swings the past month (90 one day, down to 45 at night, 65 following day, back to 90, repeat). So wasnt sure if that could be reason too. Though it looks like were done with that nonsense with temps in mid 80s to low 90s and down into low 60s at night for foreseeable future.

I ordered some Cal Mag and gave them some of that this past weekend when I watered them.

Just looking to make sure Im on right track and its not something else or if I should be doing something else.
 

Attachments

  • 825F0019-1153-4D10-9C89-F7A2C22225B8.jpeg
    825F0019-1153-4D10-9C89-F7A2C22225B8.jpeg
    93.5 KB · Views: 151
I agree with Chewi. Always rule out pests before you start hitting them with extra nutes that they may not need. Also since you mentioned your temp swings, I have HEARD that low night time temps can cause calcium deficiency due to the plants inability to uptake it when weather is cold. A common issue early in the growing season due to low night temperatures. Again, it's only what I've heard from a few sources so it may or may not be true but something to look into.
 
I hadnt even considered mites. But looks like could be the issue. I dont have a high mag viewer to look at plants though. Ill order one off amazon and have a peek to rule out pests.

I did have aphids infest a couple of plants a few weeks ago. But a few spraying of neem oil took care of them. And those were only a couple of plants where as this goofy growth is all plants.
 
Well I ordered a jeweler loupe and looked at about 3-4 leaves off each plant. I didnt see any mites. Looked bottom, top, and peaked into meristematic regions on actual plant.

I did discover some baby aphids that I guess escaped from treatment earlier this year on a couple of the plants.

So not sure if I could have missed the mites? Could it be a gnarly case of calcium deficiency? Any other thoughts?
 
My OW Tabasco plant kinda looked like your plant after 3 rounds of aphid attacks. On my plant the tips of the leaves started to turn brown also. I read aphids can cause some diseases.
What I ended up doing was, sprayed a weak solution of hydrogen peroxide and H2O on the leaves ,changed my soil to( 50/50 my garden soil and peat) , started adding about 1 tsp of vinegar to 1 gal of H2O, and added epsom salt as a top dressing. It took about 2 to 3 weeks for the plant to come back to normal.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
PtMD989 said:
My OW Tabasco plant kinda looked like your plant after 3 rounds of aphid attacks. On my plant the tips of the leaves started to turn brown also. I read aphids can cause some diseases.
What I ended up doing was, sprayed a weak solution of hydrogen peroxide and H2O on the leaves ,changed my soil to( 50/50 my garden soil and peat) , started adding about 1 tsp of vinegar to 1 gal of H2O, and added epsom salt as a top dressing. It took about 2 to 3 weeks for the plant to come back to normal.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Thanks for insight.

Im curious about rationale for the hydrogen peroxide and vinegar?
 
PtMD989 said:
I used vinegar to lower the PH of my water. It helps with nute lockout from too high ph soil and water.
What Andy said for hydrogen peroxide.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
 
Gotcha. 
 
I haven't done any soil pH testing - is using the vinegar something that's best practice as regular thing, or do you use it only if pH is getting high?
 
Doubtful it's nute lockout. Soil is a natural buffer and unless your hammering them with synthetics I doubt it's lock out.

Over watering, bugs, or to much nutes would be my first things to check.


As said above, you could replant in New soil and check root structure.

Protect from blistering hot sun until it recovers.

Hydrogen peroxide can help kill soil larve and root diseases. It also adds oxygen to soil.

Unless you have 2 - 3 Months more growing time it may be a lost cause at this point for any real pods.
 
Good news is Im inTX, so definitely have several more months of growing. Temps have been right around 88-92 and are forecasted to be that in long term forecast. Lows down in upper 60s. Im assuming that isnt blistering hot? I was planning on putting up a shade cloth over them once it starts consistently hitting mid to upper 90s to give some relief. My back yard faces south so gets TONS of sun.

Interesting was I went to nursery yesterday to get some things for plants in front of house and all of their peppers they had for sale showed similar thing as mine with crinkled new growth like his. Dont know what to make of that?

But I might try repotting in new soil and see if that does anything. Ill check out the stickies here.

My tomatoes that are in identical soil mix are really thriving and nice and big and setting tons of tomatoes. Only difference is I water them a bit more than the peppers.
 
Keep at it and post back if you get it figured out I would like to see the end results.

I would say yes those temps are blistering heat for a damaged plant already stressed out trying to recover.

Give them morning sun and move them into the shade for the bulk of the day.

Good luck and happy growing
 
Ok - Ill move them closer to the fence so they get shaded earlier in the afternoon. And try to repot them this weekend. Unfortunately not really any other place to put them on my house with good morning sun but shaded in afternoon. Ill have to rig up shade cloth sooner I suppose.

Good news is one of them had about 6 pods show up today when I was looking at them this morning (Carmen sweet pepper). So I guess thats good news. Rest are putting out lots of beautiful flowers too (new leaf growth still looks jacked - though maybe not as bad?). So maybe they will recover from this after all.
 
Im here in San Antonio, I have about 20 plants and around half have this problem. I'm not sure what it is to be honest. I have no aphids or mites. I actually did the same thing this morning and watered with fish emulsion and CalMag. I do not think its nutes but I did do a foliar spray  about a month ago and was wondering if that was it. Some of them are starting to have nice new leaves so there is some hope and I have them in great soil....just a wait and see game I guess
 
Interesting to hear experience of others. I did have aphids show up a few weeks ago. I only saw them on 2 of 8 plants. I did treat all plants in event there were a few on others that I couldnt see and hadnt started growing in number. Did a few treatments of neem oil and cleared it right up.

But now about 2-3 weeks later ALL the plants (even those w/o visible aphids) have these goofy leaves on mine

Good news is that as of this evening a few more plants have a few pods.
 
blueapplepaste said:
 
Gotcha. 
 
I haven't done any soil pH testing - is using the vinegar something that's best practice as regular thing, or do you use it only if pH is getting high?
Click to expand...
I haven’t had my soil ph tested , but I figured the ph is high, because it is really dense ( 3 types of clay). That’s why I added peat to it. My well water test about 7.5 on ph test strips that is why I added vinegar to it.
Sorry it took awhile to get back to your question.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top