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At first I thought Oedema... not anymore!

Smiffler

Smiffler

I've posted this question in another forum but I'm a little impatient for what to do about it, so i ask you over the atlantic pond if you can help me. I just don't want any bug infestation in my home ruining all my plants, especially those that have been here for over 15 years.


Just when I started to relax and enjoy my first year of growing chillies I put my specs on to inspect my plants a little closer :evil:

Over time I noticed the leaves on a few of my plants developing lighter small blotches on there leaves, as well as little dimples on the underside. Also I noticed shiny gritty looking marks on both top and bottom of the leaves.

At first i thought it might be oedema until I noticed moving objects on the underside of quite a few leaves :(

I don't know what to do about it, do I treat the plant with chemicals? or panic and bin all my plants now?

These are pics taken today on an Anaheim, other plants are similar but less affected:

Topside of leaf
an2_above-leaf-2_damage.jpg


Underside of leaf... I tried picking these off but the leaf just tore with it which made me beleive it was oedema
an2_under-leaf-2_damage.jpg


Underside of another leaf... showing the shiny gritty looking marks
an2_under-leaf-1_damage.jpg


And the nasty... looks like thrips to me!
thrips_maybe.jpg


Can someone offer me a bit of guidance on cause and remedy? They are windowsill grown plants.
_
 
Try mixing 2 tablespoons of pepper extract, 4 to 6 drops dish detergent and the rest water in an old rinsed out spray bottle. Spray tops and bottoms of leaves, those scale looking bugs should suffocate. The one leaf looks like a few Thrips have been feeding, I copied this from Wikki "some species may then inject digestive enzymes as the maxillary stylets and hypopharynx are inserted into the opening to drain cellular fluids. This process leaves a distinctive silvery or bronze scarring on the surface of the stems or leaves where the thrips feed."
 
Thank you for looking that info up, I really apreciate it. It leaves me (no pun intended) with a dilema.

Do I bag and bin all peppers now... to protect my older succulent plants.

or

Ride it out with some kind of pest control... so I can save the seeds for the next season. Will the seeds still be disease free? Will I be able to over-winter the plants? I feel like my first go at growing chillies is a failure but I never expected these bugs in the home. From what I've read about thrips they carry viruses.

I have to laugh at myself for panicking but my real purpose for this season was to learn how to grow peppers, save the seed (I made sure they were true and isolated from other plants), then grow a more successful crop the next season.

Gosh i do panic and worry. lol

_
 
Can you isolate the plants and try to control the outbreak? I would do that first if you have available space. You can eliminate them but I believe you will need to be diligent in whatever method you choose. Your plants don't look diseased, just infested.

I may be wrong this is just my opinion after doing my own research recently in the same topic.

Good luck!
 
Mix 1 1/2 teaspoons of neen and Ivory soap or Murphy's to 1 QT of water spray plants every day for a week then once a week should clear up you can spray all plants as it will not hirt. PLEASE DO NOT SPRAY WITH DETERGENT, as it will KILL your plants. IT works I use it all the time
 
Sethsquatch: I did think about isolation but I don't have anywhere suitable.

HawaiiAl: I think you are right that some kind of neem/soap/water spray would help, I'm finding it difficult to source in the UK.


Today I decided to cut down the most infected plants to 6" stumps, the cuttings of the plants were bagged and binned.

I know it was a harsh decision, and a bit sadening, but I only wanted to use the first year to save some seed for next season whilst learning stuff on the way. Of course, to eat the produce too which I did and liked. It just made sense to control the biggest infestation promptly as I have a few plants that still look good and I will be treating those as a preventitive measure when I find something suitable.

The most infected plant was dropping too many green leaves and looking very spotty. Other plants were starting to look stressed and gaining distorted leaves full of what you see in the second picture in my first post.

I feel like i've done the plants a great dishonour and not helped them to survive but I do intend to over-winter them and keep them healthier next season.

In the meantime I am looking for a good neem, insecticidal soap and water mix for routing spraying. Does anyone know where best to get these? I've scoured the internet but not sure I'm finding the right products.
_
 
HawaiiAl said:
Mix 1 1/2 teaspoons of neen and Ivory soap or Murphy's to 1 QT of water spray plants every day for a week then once a week should clear up you can spray all plants as it will not hirt. PLEASE DO NOT SPRAY WITH DETERGENT, as it will KILL your plants. IT works I use it all the time
Click to expand...

My plants seem to not have a problem with a few drops of dish detergent sprayed on their leaves, been doing it for a long time for aphids, am I doing something different the you did?
 
Well after some reading on thrips today I'm not sure it might be safer to throw out all the seeds I collected, and the plants, and the ones I intended to over-winter to eliminate the possibility of spreading a virus... namely the Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus. Does anyone think I should or shouldn't?

Both the peppers on my most affected plant showed what I thought was harmless corking like you get on Jalapeno's. But after looking at this website...

http://www.infonet-biovision.org/default/ct/119/crops

Scroll down to near the bottom of the page to Thrips, they can cause corking.

Here's the corking on one of my Anaheims... look similar?
an2_ccorking-by-thrips_maybe.jpg


Also, thrips can cause a significantly smaller crop by dropping buds, flowers and pods. All of which have happened to the plants I have affected by thrips. They all had between 4-14% fruit set compared to 86-96% bud and flower drop during the first round of flowers. The 4% being the most affected plant.

So, it seems I may have had this problem from the start. Maybe bad seeds in the first place, I dunno.
_
 
Sorry to hear of your problems Smiffler. I agree with your decision to try and limit the problem.

If it were my decision to make I would go ahead and toss everything, including seeds. Since there's no way of knowing how the infestation started the best thing would be to start new--with everything.

I for one would be happy to share seeds with you. You can check out my grow log on this forum and if you see anything that interests you, other than the AISPES varieties, I will send them to you.
 
Smiffler said:
Well after some reading on thrips today I'm not sure it might be safer to throw out all the seeds I collected, and the plants, and the ones I intended to over-winter to eliminate the possibility of spreading a virus... namely the Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus. Does anyone think I should or shouldn't?

Both the peppers on my most affected plant showed what I thought was harmless corking like you get on Jalapeno's. But after looking at this website...

http://www.infonet-biovision.org/default/ct/119/crops

Scroll down to near the bottom of the page to Thrips, they can cause corking.

Here's the corking on one of my Anaheims... look similar?
an2_ccorking-by-thrips_maybe.jpg


Also, thrips can cause a significantly smaller crop by dropping buds, flowers and pods. All of which have happened to the plants I have affected by thrips. They all had between 4-14% fruit set compared to 86-96% bud and flower drop during the first round of flowers. The 4% being the most affected plant.

So, it seems I may have had this problem from the start. Maybe bad seeds in the first place, I dunno.
_
Click to expand...


For some reason the thrips around here just love my ficus trees they seem to leave everything else alone. Now the damn whiteflies are a different story they seem to like my patio plants, thous I use my hot sauce detergent water spray mix on those plants, it seems to keep most everything away.
 
Thank you Patrick you gave me the push I needed. And I'd like to say you are very generous to offer me some of your chilli seeds. :)

Me and my GF were discussing what to do because it was nice seeing the plants grow up on the windowsilll to eventually producing edibles, I said I didn't know whether to risk keeping the seed, the rest of the plants and risk over-wintering, but all I needed was someone else to agree everything should go. She agreed that something had to be done whilst itching at the thought of little blighters in the home. So, the lot will be gone tommorow but do you think the chillies will be edible before I toss the rest of the plants? Some have ripe fruit that I'd like to eat but I don't fancy the thought of tainted thrip liquid in my chillies. Probably best not to.

Prehensile:
Interestingly you use a hot sauce spray... In the link in my last post that website has a garlic and pepper spray I thought about trying.

Here's the direct link http://www.infonet-biovision.org/default/ct/78/pests
Scroll down near the bottom of the page to 'Biopesticides and physical methods' > 'Other botanicals and measures'
_
 
Pretty sure you can wash just about anything off of a pepper and make it edible. I mean people eat mushrooms and they grow those in all kinds of yuck. So yeah, eat the ripe ones.
 
Friday night I was so set to destroy everything but the next morning I just couldn't do it until I was 100% sure the plants were toast. So, I took another step back and did some further reading and thinking; I've decided that the leaf spots must be oedema and not thrips eggs, although I haven't been able to find one picture of thrips eggs anywhere to determine what they look like. However, this link shows a picture (the second one looks remarkably like mine) and a good description about oedema: As far as I know the spots have been there long before thrips.

http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/pp/notes/oldnotes/gp3.htm

I'm ok about cutting some of my plants down, I managed to control the thrips faster. The remaining plants have ocassional spots on the leaves and a few shiny parts from feeding thrips but their general look is cleam and are being treated with spray. I've only seen 1 thrip yesterday that felt the wrath of my fingers, and today none. I shall be keeping an eye on it.

My stunted plants and seeds will now see next season where I will be less hasty and learn from my on going mistakes.

All in all, I think, because I don't know enough about plant care, I reached for the first possibility I found and acted on it. I'm an idiot!
_
 
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