calcium deficiency in pepper plants - habanero puckered, curling, bumpy leaves - solution

[TheRastaRick]

Thanks for the tip :) the food i use is RITE GREEN CITRUS, AVOCADO & MANGO FERTILIZER 4-6-8 mixed with Ocean Forest soil & horse manure. I normally use it for my mango tree & it works phenomenal. I also use it on my spinach, peppers, cucumbers, basically all my vegetables & it seems to give me an abundance of healthy green food to my service. This fertilizer is bought at any walmart if you were wondering. But where do you get your hot pepper seeds from? You have an outstanding variety

[pabbananna]

@TheRastaRick

Mangos? I am so envious! As far as seeds go I'm not sure where I got them but probably at totallytomato (dot) com - my Chocolate Habanero Peppers are their item number 03047

That sounds like an awesome organic mix you have there - much easier (and healthier) to go the natural way. I hear great things about that Ocean Forest soil.

[TheRastaRick]

On that note, Peppers love nitrogen! People say dont add too much nitrogen to pepper plants, but I put loads of nitrogen food in my soil & my pepper plants yield so much fruit. Mine is barely a foot tall, just more bushier & has over 70+ peppers on it. The thing is this, nitrogen produces more leaves on a plant, but where do leaves grow from? They grow from branches, & peppers grow from branches. So that being said, the more leaves, the more branches. The more branches, the more peppers! Enjoy:)

[pabbananna]

@TheRastaRick Congrats on your fat plants and thanks for commenting! I just wanted to note to others that it is generally accepted (I haven't tested it) that excess nitrogen will delay/inhibit onset of fruits on pepper plants. Of course there are A LOT of other factors - not the least of which is the strain you are growing. My best tip is to mind the pH & air/water temperatures, use a well balanced 2 part fertilizer and if going soil-less - calculate calcium ppm in the solution.

[tato312]

hello, I dont know alot about how many nutrients plants need, so heres my question:

I have a small avocado plant, maybe its like 4 inches tall, but the tip of the leaves are starting to dry out, they get brown and brittle. Is it caused by a lack of some nutrient?

thanks :)

[pabbananna]

@tato312 i don't know about avocado but burnt leaf tips is often caused by over fertilization or too low of humidity. Get a cheap hydrometer and check it out. And don't use full strength nutrients. hope this helps

[strangeluv23]

I just planted some habaneros outside, and it seems my leaves are starting to pucker. I read somewhere that dissolving a Tums into the top soil will help with the calcium problem, but I've been hesitant to try it. Does this leaf puckering only happen in habaneros?

[pabbananna]

@strangeluv23 I think all peppers have high calcium requirements. Tums is calcium carbonate and I'm not sure of its bioavailability but if you didn't go overboard it is a pretty harmless compound. To do this right and on the cheap what you really want is calcium nitrate. I have seen it for sale by the pound in grow stores for less than $3 and that would last you a lifetime.

You will hear people touting eggshells but that is going to take a long time because organisms have to break it down first.

[theitalian556]

@pabbananna There is also bone meal but that takes a long time to work in. For the quickest results cal mag works best! Good video and explanation btw!

[pabbananna]

@theitalian556 Thanks for the comment! and I agree bone meal would be a great insurance policy. personally im scared of it because of mad cow disease - the two were correlated in some outbreak as I recall. that and my substrate is mostly inert (the coco fiber does add nutrient buffering / absorbs some at the start / has a bit of sodium in it)

I think the takeaway from the video should be that peppers put most of the calcium into the fruit at the beginning of fruitset so be ready!

[pabbananna]

@strangeluv23 Tums is Calcium Carbonate and that will not work. See below from the june 2009 issue of maximum yield:

"The most typical form of these minerals in your untreated water is calcium carbonate and magnesium carbonate. Unfortunately, contrary to popular belief, these forms are virtually unusable by plants, especially fast growing plants. The molecules of these compounds are far too large and immobile to be absorbed by the roots and transported to where the plant needs them. "

[Cronndo]

Sweet, I love finding exactly what I need.. Someone else had told me dimpling like that was from lack of phosphorus... I added P and it kind of fixed my problem but the next week I got a flush of flowers and more curled up leaves like that, not just dimpled... Just added calmag to them for the first time today because I figured thats the only thing they could be missing then I decided to do some research and found this. Thank you for posting. Nice little florescent garden you got there also.

[pabbananna]

@Cronndo thank you for the reply. It is helping people like you that motivates me to make little tutorials like this. If you are using a one part fertilizer (unless it is organic) you will have a calcium deficiency because it cannot exist in concentration with another nutrient (I forget which) without precipitating out of the solution. Deficiency of macronutrient is highly unlikely unless you haven't balanced the pH or are using an acidic substrate like peat.