Hi guys, so I’ve been growing ghost peppers, and Carolina reapers (and a few other unrelated plants) in my grow tent for a while now, and I see that some of my leaves on my peppers are showing signs of sickness. There was a whitefly infestation in my grow tent, but I sprayed my plants with diluted neem oil, and they see to be dead now.
I’m wondering if the issue might be the temperature, since my grow tent is outside (I don’t have space indoors) and according to the thermometer I keep in the grow tent is 55°F at night. If the issue is temperature, should I buy some heat mats in my grow tent?
I do have a fan inside of it, and an exhaust thing in the tent to keep the air circulating, and I don’t smell anything moldy in the tent, but I really have no clue what the problem could be.
Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!
by Sweet-Set-57
3 Comments
At a glance it looks like light burn. Neem will exacerbate this as well. You have ladybugs, so why use neem? Try turning the lights down for a bit.
Overwatering
I’d give the peppers a little spray down with water to clean up the old leaves. I saw another user mention light intensity after neem oil use and that could be possible. Too bright of light can scorch pepper leaves too, this year I covered my peppers with some burlap during the intense part of the year to keep the leaves from burning too much. I use the phone app Photone to measure my plants DLI(direct light integral). They also have a chart for the approximate DLI for a plant on their website. Obviously won’t be perfectly accurate but it’ll give you a ballpark that’s good enough.
Sometimes pepper leaves that have been stressed will just get old and die off too but once peppers are established, they’re vigorous growers. I would prune off some of the older dying leaves, the plant will be ok. I had a ghost pepper that I cut to pretty much a stump after she got decimated by aphids and grew back way healthier. Also, I would make sure you are fertilizing your peppers enough since feeding requirements are different for potted plants and plants grown in ground, they can get hungry and can be more susceptable to pests and disease. Good luck and hope some of these things help! 💖