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pests Aphids everywhere, some non-peppers need help too.

cruzzfish

cruzzfish

Anyone know anything that can be used safely on adult peppers and seedlings? If anyone else knows about treating carnivores like venus flytraps, that would be amazing.
 
cruzzfish said:
Anyone know anything that can be used safely on adult peppers and seedlings? If anyone else knows about treating carnivores like venus flytraps, that would be amazing.
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The only thing I know that can be used on both adult and seedling pepper plants in beneficial insects. I know that's not going to help you (right now). Seedlings are tough to deal with because you chance burning them with many of the sprays that are available and they are still too under developed to hold them under a steady stream of water. And that in itself is not ideal when considering over 100 seedlings.
Good luck, its tough, I know.
 
My plants were infested with aphids until I rounded up some ladybugs and brought them to my containers. The aphids instantly fled, twas a magical experience.
 
As already stated, ladybugs. The type of plant is irrelevant. What you need is natural predators of aphids. I get ladybugs from buglogical.com and they have been very reliable, if you can't locate a local vendor.
 
I'm looking to try lacewings myself. They also offer them at my local nursery. Another member recently updated a thread with his battle against aphids and the lacewings he bought vanquished them :)

 
 
OP, are you having ants at all in the garden/plants?
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I know you didn't ask me but wow I had a TON of ants when I had an aphid infestation in a raised bed last grow season. Is there a relationship there?
 
Ladybugs work pretty good, but if you have a true infestation, they will be too little, too late.
Use Ladybugs plus a neem oil insecticide 
Try Garden Safe Fungicide 3 that you can buy at Wal-Mart
Spray plants that do not have ladybugs on them.
Spray the tops AND THE UNDERSIDE of the leaves.
Spray no more than 2X per week with neem insecticide.
 
Besides all of the natural predators already mentioned, you could try a White oil spray. This will kill the Aphids but it also has a good chance of burning your plants, especially your seedlings and any newer growth on adult plants.
 
What I do is spray the plants liberally with the White oil, leave for 10-15 minutes, and then hose it off thoroughly with water using a fine mist, but high pressure garden hose. You may want to use a hand held spray bottle for your seedlings. 
 
Repeat after a day if necessary. 
 
 
SR.
 
Any insecticide will kill the ladybugs as well as the aphids. If you can segregate your plants, like bring some indoors and leave others outdoors, then using both insecticide and ladybugs is an ok approach - one on the plants inside, the other on the the plants outside. Otherwise just use insecticide if you're determined to use it. I grew cilantro last year, along with chiles, and (fortunately for the chiles) there was a massive infestation of aphids on the cilantro. The ladybugs took care of them in due order. I would question anyone who says that ladybugs are too little, too late, regarding their vendor. The first year I got ladybugs I purchased them from Hirts, and all they did was walk right over the aphids. I later learned that Hirts feeds them stuff other than aphids, so they're not used to hunting for food. I switched vendors and got very different results. 
 
Spicy Mushroom said:
I'm looking to try lacewings myself. They also offer them at my local nursery. Another member recently updated a thread with his battle against aphids and the lacewings he bought vanquished them :)

 
I know you didn't ask me but wow I had a TON of ants when I had an aphid infestation in a raised bed last grow season. Is there a relationship there?
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Some ants use aphids the same way we use cows. The ants will "milk" the aphids for honeydew that they excrete. They will carry the aphids around and onto plants. They will also protect aphids from ladybugs so if you have ants and aphids together the ants have to go. I had a major infestation in my containers last year and everywhere I looked I had ants crawling in and on all my containers. Started to really watch them and saw them carrying aphids I had knocked off with water back up the stem. I put down some of those dual feed bait stations (half protein half sweet) and after a week their was a huge decrease in ants as well as aphids.
 
Like others have said ladybugs are great but their nymphs are better. Those things eat many more than ladybugs themselves. Wish you could buy the nymphs themselves. I want to try lacewing this year if I get aphids. The lacewing larvae are what actually eat the aphids. Once they turn they eat mostly nectar and pollen with the occasional aphid, mite, etc. The lacewing larvae are so damn good at hunting aphids that they're called aphid lions. I've heard that parasitic aphid wasps are also damn good at eradicating aphids.
 
Plant plants that attract beneficials like marigolds, dill, lavender, cilantro, basil, etc. Plant them near your peppers and you won't have to buy bugs so often. They will stick around and form colonies in your yard
 
As much as I'd like to use benificial insects(there are actually a few ladybugs) I can't really because of these: http://imgur.com/xpAGz4P
Although there are ants now, there weren't when the aphids showed up. Even then, it's just the ants getting eaten by the plants.  So far I've been giving the seedlings a bath every now and then, and the big plants are outside waiting for outside things to eat the aphids. There were a few wasps earlier. I'll look around for some sort of systemic insecticide to use on the seedlings and other stuff.
 
^ If you have some carnivorous plants you're worried are going to devour your beneficial insect population perhaps the lacewing larvae specifically will circumvent that concern. Scorched said it was the lacewing larvae that are the primary aphid hunters. Will the carnivorous plants eat the larvae as well? Will they be able to consume enough to hinder those aphids lions from completing the task? I wouldn't think so. My knowledge is very limited here though.
 
 
 
Plant plants that attract beneficials like marigolds, dill, lavender, cilantro, basil, etc. Plant them near your peppers and you won't have to buy bugs so often. They will stick around and form colonies in your yard
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I planted a bunch of marigolds around the parameter of one of my raised beds. Half a dozen onions and a couple thymes and sages. Think that will do the trick?
 
The thing about ordering ladybugs is quantity. The minimum order on buglogical.com is 1,500 ladybugs. Some may die in transit, but you will still have hundreds of ladybugs. Yes, some will lose out to the carnivorous plants, others won't. But yes, you might not see many ants, but it doesn't take a ton of them to farm aphids. I was rather surprised by the infestation of aphids on my cilantro, precisely because we didn't have many ants. And you'll notice that it was my cilantro that had the aphid infestation, yet it is one of the plants that supposedly attract beneficials. How crazy is that? And marigolds? Meh. I am not convinced about their properties, either. Many, many people say that marigolds are beneficial, but you couldn't prove it by my experience with them. Not to mention I don't even like their appearance. 
 
As much as I love the idea of using predator insects, there are some issues here. Read a little about propagating ladybugs for pest control; I was considering it myself not so long ago for a number of reasons. It's just not efficient or cost-effective, especially on a larger scale, and they're unpredictable to boot, especially from the wrong vendor.

Lacewings are a mixed blessing at best.

My advice would be to get stagger weekly sprays of Castile soap and a neonicotinoid indicated for aphids, such as Acetamiprid, while simultaneously following the trail of ants as close to the colony as you can get and putting down the right bait.

If you're going to use insecticides, alternate between different families with each spray so you don't unintentionally select for resistance to a particular family.

Aphids are pretty easy to get under control, all things considered. Be glad you aren't fighting off Scirtothrips dorsalis.

Oh, and if you're concerned about harming the environment, keep bees and close them in when you spray, as necessary.
 
 
 
Some may die in transit, but you will still have hundreds of ladybugs.
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Buying them from a local nursery isn't an option?
 
 
 
But yes, you might not see many ants, but it doesn't take a ton of them to farm aphids.
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Would planting a distraction for the ants be an effective means of aphid control in that scenario?
 
 
 
And marigolds? Meh. I am not convinced about their properties, either. Many, many people say that marigolds are beneficial, but you couldn't prove it by my experience with them.
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Can you recommend some flowers that would be more ideal? I just planted a whole slew of marigolds more or less for that purpose lol
 
This is what's working for me this year. I have no present aphids as of now. I'm keeping the ants away! I'm putting a barrier of diateomous earth only around the base of each plants. This stops the ants from climbing up and down farming the aphids. I do check periodically under the leaves, but there's no aphids. If there was I would squish and let the lace wings and lady bugs come naturally and they will. Most growers are to anxios and spray pesticides right before the predators arrive to put them in check. I alwYs see lacewing eggs in my garden but they will just die or move on because there's no pests.
The barrier of DE works for leafminers too, I squish any leafminer on the leaf but if I miss one once he leaves the leaf he will drop to the soil to pupate, I mean drop to my DE, haha.

FYI, if using DE, use a mask so you don't breath any in. You will also have to reapply it the following day after watering/feeding your plants.
 
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