I've been growing peppers for a few years, but haven't seen this before. My Jalapeno and scotch bonnet plants stopped growing early in the season. The new growth they were trying to make was getting deformed. New leaves were curled and stunted and the terminal buds got gnarled up and stopped putting out new growth (see photo). The older leaves seem less/not impacted. It started with the jalapeno plant and then hit the scotch bonnet a few weeks later.
I thought about:
Does anyone have any ideas what it could be?
I thought about:
- Calcium deficiency – soil is about 2/3’s new potting soil and 1/3 refreshed soil from last year that was refreshed with Jobe’s organic slow release fertilizer and some worm castings. Everything else is fine growing in the same stuff. Just in case I gave it some liquid fert, but no impact.
- Aphids – looks exactly like aphid damage to me. Moreover, i had a bunch of aphids attacking some strawberries not too far away in the garden. However, there were no aphids anywhere on the plants.
- Broad Mites – I’ve never dealt with them before, but I became convinced they were the culprit. It looks like insect damage to me, but I couldn’t see any insects so must be really small insects, right? I bought a pocket microscope (60-120x) and looked all over the plants, but I couldn’t find a single one. Could I be missing them?
- Cold damage - We had a relatively chilly, overcast and wet May, but I’m growing in containers and brought them in if it ever looked like it was dropping below 50 at night. June has been hot and sunnier, but the growth hasn’t really kicked in as expected.
Does anyone have any ideas what it could be?