New plant this year with extreme leaf curl

question: is the color shown in the picture the actual color of the leaves, or is that because of the way the photo was taken? they are very light green.

make sure the soil is good and wet before doing the spray, or you'll get different problems. ideally get it good and wet with the same epsom salt/fish emulsion water you'd be spraying it with, the roots like that stuff too. in fact as I understand it they like it more than the leaves do.

also, how many hours of sun do they get per day?

also, do you know if they're getting attacked by pests?

also, what kind of peppers are those? jalapenos? knowing what kind they are will help us compare them to what they're 'supposed' to look like.

Starving plants, they seem.

Josh

I think the pictures came out a little yellowy but also believe the leaves are too light green.

I do not believe they are attacked by pests. The plants are in sunlight almost all day when it is sunny. however it is often gray here 2 miles from the ocean, so not much direct sun or at least not every day, but i would guess 8-10 hours of direct overcast or sun depending on the day.

I bought the following products yesterday to give the plants what it needs.
Epson Salt
Fish Emulsion
Kellogg organic fertilizer
Mater magic fertilizer

My plan was to alternate a fish emulsion one week and epson salt 2 weeks apart, I could make a plant cocktail of the two for immediate addition to the soil and the leaves as well as fertilizer to the soil. What should I add right now to jumpstart these plants back to happiness?

This photo is a Habanero

Caribbean Peppers

Poblano,
Size and fruit looking good, leaves sparse though

Last year plants looking fairly good all around, except now figure leaves could be greener now that I look closer.

Might have better fertilizer from previous years additions compared to this years soil preparation

Yeah, leaves are very way too yellow. Get some nitrogen in them ASAP. Forget about the epsom salts until you do. I'd say the fish emulsion and the organic fert will be too slow, so try mater magic?

(Not familiar with those particular ferts.)

Yep.. definitely look starved. If you want to go an organic route to get some Nitrogen to them, fish ferts and blood meal are fairly giuick acting.

You mention insects -- possibly whitefly. Shake your plants at sundown. If a bunch of white little flies start flying, then it's whitefly. Let me know and I'll give a few suggestions.

By the way, if you're in SoCal, your zone listed is WAY off. Also, try to get away from a drip system for peppers. You could also possibly be overwatering.

Kevin

Thanks Woohooman and others,

Yep I am up in Oceanside and when it asked for my zone I missinterpreted the chart colors. My zone is 10B, used to live in Wyoming more like 3B.

I added the Mater Magic to the top 1" of all my pots and watered. I have the drip system on every 3 days to just keep them watered in case I am called out of town and not there to water them. I supplement water with hand watering to get each plant right. I am still looking to get the water system down to get the tomatoes peppers and greens watered and balanced correctly.

I will add some fish emulsion to the next hand watering time and pick up some bone meal.

So to follow up.

I have mixed in a little bit of Mater magic in the soil, a bit under the suggested dose to make sure i have enough to go around to all the peppers. I have some Osmocote I will add to the soil to get some more nutrients in.

I then added the fish emulsion a watering container, wonderful smelling stuff BTW, and watered my entire garden. I know the Mater Magic will take a while to release its goodness as opposed to the Fish emulsion. Being my garden looked so deprived of nutrients should I add some fish emulsion again soon or wait 2 weeks like I have seen suggested? When should i give the Epson Salt treatment?

Don't just keep dumping loads of stuff on them. Ease them into it and wait for some sign of results. If you just keep pushing more and more nutrients at them, you might over dose them before you realize they are taking it in. Also, you want to know what is working or not working before going with another nutrient unless you are sure of what they need and what you are giving them. Some of your listed nutrients such as Osmocote is generally a bit slower acting/time released. If you add that and then start dumping fish emulsion and mater magic and others, you might wind up with an overdose in a few weeks. Take it slow. They are not going to die over night from starvation so start them out slow. You have basically a year round growing season so there is no need to rush them at this point. Oh, and I would cut back to maybe a 4-5 day watering cycle unless you start to see signs of lack of water.
Bruce

Yeah. You could have good-draining pots and excess water would wash dissolved nutriments out the bottom rather than drown the plant.

Dennis

With the fish emulsion, you can cut the strength in half and fertilize twice as often if you wish. It does take about 1 week for the emulsion to really take effect.

Josh

It seems to me you have them in a soil free mix..mostly bark..as bark breaks down it uses up the nitrogen..I personally would go with a foliar feed..and add one table spoon epson salt per gallon..a good compost tea would do miracles soak plant and soil.

My Habanero looked like yours initially and I couldn't figure out what was wrong. I changed the potting soil since it contained a lot of bark and applied fish emulsion and it is now a dark green and producing flowers.

A drip system lacks the washing effect that top watering has. It can result in salt build-up especially if you have hard water. You may try letting the medium dry out significantly, then flushing with a large amount of softened water followed by a good (but modest) dose of a fertilizer -with micronutrients-.

It is important to soften your water for containers in most CA locations as the water is very hard and can cause serious problems when salts accumulate, as well as making it more difficult for your plants to uptake nutrients in general. I use white vinegar, just a splash in each watering can to reduce the hardness and PH seems to do wonders for my potted peppers.

Foliage Pro is a good choice for a fertilizer should you choose to do this. I would not put fish emulsion into a soil free mix because there are less or no microorganisms to convert the emulsion to usable nutrients.

A water report may be helpful, I suspect you have very hard water and should be careful using a drip system. I live in the central valley where it was over 100F for the last week, (over 110 three times!!!). I still did not have to water my potted peppers every day and they are only in 4-5 gal pots. You should be fine hand watering in SoCal as long as you mulch your pots to reduce root temp and evaporation.

I hope I have not overfed my plants now as I did add some Mater magic, then fish emulsion then osmocote as I did not have enough mater magic to bring it up to recommended levels. I did so before I read the warning to not overdo it. I am now just waiting to see the results before adding anything more.

Here is the analysis of the water from my local municipality.
https://www.ci.oceanside.ca.us/civica/filebank/blobdload.asp?BlobID=31000

I believe the water is fairly hard. I have a Reverse Osmosis de-inonize filter in my home. I use it for my fish tank but also tap off it after the first two filters for brewing and drinking water. Should I use this to flush my plants out of possible salts?

I would like to know what my soil is like but we planted over the course of a few months and each pot has something a bit different. The containers contain mostly potting soil. I do not know why they look like all bark, but maybe some got a too large concentration of compost in them. I will look at those and re-pot those ones with soil.

What should I mulch with? I mulched my first garden in Utah about 7 years ago and ended up with tons of earwigs and other pests. This was not container gardening.

Bark is good, sapwood is not. Most potting soils are pretty free of sapwood. So, it mat not be the soil STRUCTURE. Next time, look for a potting MIX -- they usually contain more bark and less peat. Did you add any lime to the potting soil? If not, you may want to test the ph.

Flushing with that should be fine. Just don't do it if they're already waterlogged.

You being in Oceanside, you may not want mulch except to save water. Bark Mulch, straw, or composted grass clippings are acceptable. Check your soil temp at the height of the day -- if it's in the 70's, you may want to use black plastic as a mulch... check temp again if you do -- mid 80's is what you're shooting for.

By the way, generally the benefits of mulching far outweigh the drawbacks. Because it's SO mild even in the dead of summer in O'side, that may not be the case for heat-loving plants.

Also, i don't know about the mater magic(is it organic or slow release?), but it's awfully tough to overfeed using osmocote and fish ferts.

Kevin

Just found a PH meter amongst my garden tools. What ph should I be getting from my soil test?

You want your soil between 6 and 7.5 if I remember correctly, maybe 6.5 to 7.5 but don't quote me. I use straw to mulch, if you use a light layer it has good air flow and still shades the soil thus it is not a great habitat for earwigs, not to mention earwigs have never caused any noticeable harm in my gardens.

Your link to the water report will not load for me, but it is rare to find a soft source of water in CA, I am willing to bet you should be throwing some vinegar in. This is more important for containers than the ground, btw.

Peppers showing improvement already. Not the greener leaves coming out the top.

I added a god layer of mulch to the peppers.

Because the plants are so stunted but expecting a spurt now, I am tempted to top or prune the smaller plants but feel the only healthy leaves are the ones on top that I would be cutting off. What do you folks think about topping or pruning these?

i would not use to much salt in the spray bottle unless your soil is lacking it that can = very bad news i would also not top it just yet unless you have more greener leafs sprouting down below where you plan to cut . for instance if you top right now and them non healthy leafs decide to fall off that plant will have a much harder time gathering energy and might not make it just my opinion . did you mix epsom salt in the soil when you planted them to ?

here is what looks like could be happening if your spraying salt on them and the soil is not lacking it you will dehydrate your root system instead of the roots taking up water and valuable Nutrients it is in panic mode pushing out water to help get the salts away from the root system and the plants are starving . they are making new sprouts so that is a good sign i would flush the pot a few times and stay away from any salts .