Transplants from seeds now new leaves are shriveled

[acamb67]

Help please!! I have been growing hot peppers such as jalapeno, thai and new mexico along with tomatoes from seeds since January. Well I transplanted the best looking tomatoes and peppers into containers, but a couple of the pepper plants don't look very good.

My best pepper plant has about 9 blossoms, but all of the new leaves seem to be very stunted and wilted. They do not look like any pictures that I have seen of common diseases in my area.

Basically it looks like the veins are shrinking and the flesh of the leaves are being squished. So it looks a little scaly where the flesh of the leaves is sticking up between the veins. The older leaves seam fine, just the new ones are shrunken and almost bumpy, but only from the flesh of the leaves.

Please let me know if you have seen this, it isn't happening to all of my plants, I just wanted to make sure it was a disease before I threw the plant out. It is also happening to a tomatillo plant, ugggg. Also, if it is a disease should I worry about it staying in the terra cotta pot? Do I need to disinfect it with bleach water, will that stay in the poors of the clay?

Thank you for any help!

[TZ -OH6]

Any chance they could have caught some herbicide drift from nearby spraying?

[Kisal]

You might find an answer on this page:

https://www.ecoseeds.com/Pepper.growing.tips.html

[applestar]

That's a good one, although I disagree about not using compost and I don't use chemical fertilizers, there are some very useful info. Thanks for posting the link!

[acamb67]

Thanks for the replies, I will go look at that website. And yes, there is quite possibly a chance that they did get some stray spray from pesticides, they are on my balcony on the first floor, so the building pest control round might have gotten on them.

Thanks for the ideas! I will be researching more

[acamb67]

Well, the site suggested was great, lots of useful information. They actually had a section (with pictures) of the exact problem that my plants are having. It turns out they are defficient in bone meal. I will begin a regimen of correction to the problem.

[kylie77]

That was a very interesting and informative link. It's just a bit weird though because I apparently did tons completely wrong and my pepper plants look fab! I used peat pellets to start them off and had no trouble with germination, I water with tap water, and haven't added bone meal (although I will now). I have 3 types of peppers I've started and all 3 have buds already and look super healthy to me. Still though I guess doing it all 'right' just increases your chances of things working out. I'll know for next year.