The Hot Pepper

Yeah, seems like they're super-aphids.
The thai seems a lost cause, surprisingly the adjuma has none and the small ones also have'em.
But it looks like pinch-therapy does work, but it only really works for the small ones.
I think I need to cut back the thai. :´(

i usually wash off roots and fill a bucket with water and soap then i put the whole plant in and move around for about 30 seconds then repot in fresh soil

I seem to have at least a couple different types of aphids - one lot is red and the other is white.
I would give that a shot, Nightshade, but with my two largest plants there's no chance I could safely lift either out of the bins they are growing in - much too big. Is the roots where the babies start at? I've never noticed the damn things near the trunk of the plants - always just swarming the leaves, branches & buds/flowers. I have sprayed the top of the soil with soapy wate...

There's a DIY material called Tangle Trap that a lot of people use to make sticky traps. Have you considered applying some to your trunk to see if you catch any ants? Perhaps thats why they are coming back.

Hmm.. I still have some yellow sticky strips around. Maybe I could cut them up a bit and affix them to the branches.

I haven't sighted any ants around since it's in the basement and the fall temperatures are setting in so the ants have buggered off.

Are the red ones aphids or spider mites?

No signs of webbing and they intermingle with the green ones on the plants. The times webbing has been present has been when there have been spiders and at those spots there wasn't any aphids.

A while back I took in around 50-70 ladybugs but most buggered off. In the past few days I've spotted maybe 1-2 in my plant room, along with at least one ladybug larvae.. Though they don't seem to be making much effort to eat the aphids, as they have in the past.

Yea... I hate aphids... I went into the season prepare though, bought about 4500 ladybugs... had quite a few actually stick around, and ended up with several generations of them over the season. Lacewings didn't do as well, but did see some eggs for them, so they musta been around for a while at least

If you get a warm enough day, take em outside and spray the heck outta them... blast them off the plants and leave their rotting corpses to freeze! May not help much, but m...

...but may make you geel better! If not warm enough, toss the plants in the shower and blast them there... and imagine you can hear their tiny screams as they get sucked down the swirling vortex of death down the drain!

The only plants that haven't been harmed are around 7 of my Naga Jolokia and that's because they're in another part of the basement (wasn't space for them in the grow room). Last night I planted a bunch of new seeds. If they manage to germinate and grow then I'm thinking the best thing might just be for me [continued..]

.. to trim the current plants back and move them out of the grow room, scrub the room down from top-to-bottom and then start fresh with the new seedlings.