Strong plants suddenly all dying from top down.

venturasurf

venturasurf

Hello everyone.
 
This is hitting my habanero plants and my tomatoes and now spreading to my scorpion plants. These plants were all doing very well until about a week or so ago this started happening. I am finding aphids all over the place too, would they cause this problem? I've sprayed the ever loving piss out of everything with permethrin and I still keep finding aphids. My beautiful pepper garden is suddenly going down the flusher. Any help and advice would be very much appreciated!
 
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I had that issue on 5 or so plants last year. I think it is a virus infection and I ended up pulling and destroying the plants. Someone here will know more for sure...
 
Looks about the same as mine last year. The temperature dropped during the winter but nit enough to be concerned abiut overwintering them.... the older growth died and some of the branches had to be removed and some of the new growth ended up dying, but they kept going and survived. The buddy I left them with when I moved a few months ago said theyve been putting out pods like crazy.... and I didn't have any aphid problems around that time so they were inly being sprayed with epsom salt.... slight continuous overwatering maybe? I got into the habit of spreading 750 ml of water among 10 plants every few days rather than really good waterings only when they wilted as the temps cooled down as everyone at work kept saying I wasnt watering them enough. .. gave the impression they were always being watered to prevent others from feeling they needed to water them for me....
But we did have akot of wind and random rain and a lot of cloud cover for a few weeks around that time too....
 
I did have a major overwatering issue and some stunted plants before I knew better and mended my ways, which was only recently. I have just learned to leave the soil light and moistly fluffy like a good sponge cake before i water it, not damp and dense like a chewy brownie. I am now hungry. I killed a soybean plant and a tomato plant to find out the hard way that I water too much.
 
I did have one tomato that had a virus problem as well about 6 weeks ago and it died, everything else grew strong. I did a further inspection of the garden just now and found MASSIVE colonies of aphids. Some leaves had 40-50 aphids and their little pink buddies huddling in bed like the Waltons.
 
I went to the big guns - just threw out a blanket of Malathion. They were scoffing at the permethrin. Got it all under the leaves too. This is WAR.
 
Also, a new challenger appears! Look what I found under one of the larger pepper leaves:
 
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Trying not to panic.
 
Ortho Fruit and vegetable spray works really well for Aphids. Sometimes the plant doesn't like the bug killer juice you are throwing at it and the new growth can't handle it. Aphids take about a week for their eggs to hatch and the sprays don't kill the eggs, so you have to do an application every 3-5 days to kill them all. You can even spray them with water on the inbetween days to get the buggers off your plants. You can go online and buy some aphid wasps as well, I've heard that they will mow through an aphid infestation with the quickness.
 
Good luck.
 
Ugh - you have my empathy!
 
The bugs could be causing the top-down dying, but so could a soil fungus. That happened to some of mine, and a good dose of hydrogen peroxide for several waterings will help kill it off. Here's a link for usage that another member posted some time back: http://www.using-hydrogen-peroxide.com/gardening-with-hydrogen-peroxide.html
 
Be sure to use the second table amount - 1 cup hydrogen peroxide to one gallon of water - while you're working to eliminate the nasties. I'll admit I went a bit higher than that, but you do risk causing damage of your own by doing that. 
 
More and more leaning towards a compound diagnosis... too much watering, possible soil fungus/root rot coupled with lots of happy aphids and lots of nasty chemicals = what I see in my garden. I'm gonna try the peroxide thing, give the plants a break from chemicals for a couple weeks and then try some Ortho if I still have an infestation. I also have a lot of fungus gnats but I usually ignore those guys - further proof of overwatering/dampness/soil problem.
 
Still, what is that crap under that leaf I posted? Tons and tons of little white specks.
 
Thanks guys!
 
Same issue last year and this year. Person a the nursery says make spacing better and isolate and butcher the plants the are and look suspicious.

Usually all the leaves drop and die.
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I have a few plants doing this, as well.  I set up a drip irrigation system a while back and while our temps were the typical 100+ F summer temps the plants were fine.  We've had a couple of weeks in the upper 70s now and I noticed a lot of yellowed leaves and bare branches.  When I checked the potting mix it was soggy.  Some pots even were growing mushrooms!  I think you are on to something with overwatering and aphids.   
 
An update:
 
I separated the sick plants from the rest of my garden, pruned off all of the decayed growth and let them dry out. They're already looking more lively and two of them have new little budding leaves starting to come out in various spots. I had planned on giving them a heavy drink mixed with peroxide once they dried out in case there was root rot, but right now I think I'm on the right track thanks to everyone's help.
 
Lakers24... were you growing two peppers in each container? I can't tell. You mentioned spacing. Interestingly all of the plants that have this issue had two seedlings transplanted into one 5 gallon container.
 
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