Lets do it like they do on the discovery channel

ok so recently i posted some pics of aphids eating my red chiles.. i had already orderd 1500 lady bugs and they arrived yesterday. man were they hungery.. let em loose in the garden, and they went nuts..

now they are clusterd under the leaves having little lady bug feasts, and orgies.. which is good im sure..

i went to check on them and noticed some little beige eggs that i hadnt seen before on the stems and under some leaves of these plants. in this pic you can see the ants on the pot rim, and the aphids, and some of the little beige eggs.

are these aphid eggs or lady bug eggs? are the ants helping or hurting? my instinct is to wait and let the lady bugs do thier thing. how long should i wait before i go get the neem oil? LOL
there is also lots of these little ants running amok on the flowers on these plants too.. is that bad?

2fishminimum said:

ok so recently i posted some pics of aphids eating my red chiles.. i had already orderd 1500 lady bugs and they arrived yesterday. man were they hungery.. let em loose in the garden, and they went nuts..

now they are clusterd under the leaves having little lady bug feasts, and orgies.. which is good im sure..

i went to check on them and noticed some little beige eggs that i hadnt seen before on the stems and under some leaves of these plants. in this pic you can see the ants on the pot rim, and the aphids, and some of the little beige eggs.

are these aphid eggs or lady bug eggs? are the ants helping or hurting? my instinct is to wait and let the lady bugs do thier thing. how long should i wait before i go get the neem oil? LOL

Click to expand...

Doesn't look like ladybug eggs. Google image search turned up different colored eggs that are laid in a cluster:


Can't tell you what those are.

As for ants. They are a hindrance as they "farm" the aphids. Basically bringing them to the plant so the aphid can feed and then poo "honeydew" which the ants take back to the nest and consume.

compmodder26 said:

Doesn't look like ladybug eggs. Google image search turned up different colored eggs that are laid in a cluster:

Can't tell you what those are.

As for ants. They are a hindrance as they "farm" the aphids. Basically bringing them to the plant so the aphid can feed and then poo "honeydew" which the ants take back to the nest and consume.

Click to expand...

dang!! i just read that too on another thread.. this link is very informative..

http://www.chilefoundry.co.uk/2012/03/16/joy-michauds-guide-to-control-of-aphids-in-pepper-plants/

Believe it or not ants are actually a problem. They will carry aphids to plants let them feast and then milk the aphids for their nector! If you see ants lay a few ant traps and try and spray around the base of the plants like a barrier. Now that you have lady bugs don't worry about using neem. I usually only get a few hundred a year and they last all year. However I do put my lady bugs into a hibernation just before I put them on my plants. I release them late in the night and I also spray the plants and lady bugs with a light coke / water mixture after I release them. Releasing them at night makes them want to find shelter as it's cold. The mixture makes their wings sticky so they don't try fly away before having a meal and making my plants their new home. Even if you only get a few of them to stay once their eggs hatch the small lady bug larvae are very hungry and actually eat a more than lady bugs. Plus because they haven't developed wings yet they are forced to stay on your plants for some time.

+1 on the ants being a big part of the problem. They will even attack your ladybugs to defend their food supply. The gray things that look like eggs are shed aphid husks. the picture posted by compmodder are pretty typical ladybug eggs. A ladybug larva looks like this