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Attack of the.... something?

HwyBill

HwyBill

Banned
I had a couple of overwinters that were going great... were even producing pods.

Then they got infested by something and got destroyed quick!

Some sort of little (barely visible with naked eye) white bugs that made cob-web type silky material across the nodes.

Any ideas? They were aphids, as I've had aphids before. They were smaller, and made this silk stuff all over the plants.

Leaves dried up and fell off... not sure if the plants will live or not, but they are completely bare of leaves now :cry:
 
Hi HwyBill, after a quick google search (as i don't have alot of experience to draw on myself), i found a little blurb describing what you appear to have.

Spidermites -

Spidermites are devastating to your pepper plants. You will notice leaves drying out, curling up and turning brown or yellow. You will notice that the leaves are covered with a super fine network of spider web silk, mostly on the underside. Spidermites are very very small but pack the punch of a bulldozer. Use a 10 power magnifying glass and look for creatures the size of a dot or a pixel or the period at the end of this sentence. Once they are on your plants you need to act fast or you will lose them. First I take the containers into the middle of the lawn and spray them as I do for aphids. This knocks most of them off and is very effective because they LOVE dusty leaves for some reason. Next, after the plant leaves dry, I carefully spray the plants with Safer Insecticidal Soap being careful to soak the underside of the leaves. Keep repeating this process every couple of days until you are sure you have licked the problem or you are doomed to lose them to the spidermites. Then of course you can always spray them into Valhalla with something seriously toxic, but remember, it is your food you are spraying.​
Hope this helps! here is the link that i found this at
http://www.webwonks.org/Hobbies/Peppers/Gardening.html
 
Yep.. that sounds like exactly what happened... Son of a Bitch!

They roached those plants SUPER FAST!

Damn.. made it so close to making it back until nice weather and they can go back outside... *sigh*

I wonder if they will bounce back.
 
Urgh - sorry to hear about that. Mites (spider mites, broad mites....) often inject a chemical into the cells of the plant which is rather pervasive - that is what causes the leaves to die first. Unfortunately, it will weaken the entire plant over time. Some of my plants got broad mites a couple years ago, and even though they seemed to recover a bit, they remained stunted the entire season and produced very little.
 
Spider mites are prob the worst pest. Out there. Imo the best thing to do depending on how big the plant is and how far into the grow season you are. Idealy sooner in the season would be best. But I would cut the plant back and strip it bare, then either burn or throw the remains of the plant into a sealed trash bag and dispose of it. By doing this you know for a fact that you have eliminated every single spider mite ( at least on the one particular plant) and they wont be coming back! If mites are on multiple plants, you might want to do the same for all of them :) There is another reason why I recommend this method. Plants that are cut back and stripped of its leaves, the plant or plants growth explodes afterwards. Of course it also helps if you pot the plant/s up after you cut them back. ( Done rambling)
 
ya, when shit like that happens it really hurts. last season i had 2 chocolate bhuts and 2 yellow bhuts that all of a sudden just decided to die in June, no reason why, they just dropped all their leaves and died, all within days. perhaps i should have checked the soil more closely. this year all my scorpions, 7 pots, nagas, morich all just perished.

good news, i have plenty of seed. bad news, the ones that died took me 2 years to grow and produce fruit.

keep on pushin' man.
 
Burning Colon said:
ya, when shit like that happens it really hurts. last season i had 2 chocolate bhuts and 2 yellow bhuts that all of a sudden just decided to die in June, no reason why, they just dropped all their leaves and died, all within days. perhaps i should have checked the soil more closely. this year all my scorpions, 7 pots, nagas, morich all just perished.

good news, i have plenty of seed. bad news, the ones that died took me 2 years to grow and produce fruit.

keep on pushin' man.
Click to expand...

Bummer man! Do you pretreat your plants with a preventative like Bonide Fruit and Nut? Pretreating normal healthy plants is the way to go. That way your plants are prepared to fight off pests and you arent surprised by an enemy invasion of pests and loose precious plants. Just a thought to consider
 
Preferal Microbial Insecticide is a naturally-occurring fungus that infects both foliage and soil dwelling insects such as whiteflies, aphids, thrips, weevils, psyllids, leafminers, spider mites, mealybugs, and other pests. Lance S. Osborne, Ph.D. and Professor of Entomology, University of Florida, Mid-Florida Research and Education Center in Apopka, discovered the Isaria fumosorosea Apopka 97 strain which is the active organism in Preferal.

http://www.sepro.com...p?page=preferal

http://thehotpepper.com/topic/38157-interesting-things/
 
If you can find a source:

"The two most popular insect specialists used to control spider mites are a lady bug named Stethorus punctum and a predatory mite named T. pyri. These insects prey on two types of spider mites, the European red mites and the two-spotted spider mites, which are agricultural pests worldwide. "
 
Gotrox said:
If you can find a source:

"The two most popular insect specialists used to control spider mites are a lady bug named Stethorus punctum and a predatory mite named T. pyri. These insects prey on two types of spider mites, the European red mites and the two-spotted spider mites, which are agricultural pests worldwide. "
Click to expand...
Did you know that there are also parasidic mites that eat spider mites? I found a video of it on youtube. I will paste in the link to it later on. Pretty interesting stuff though :) Who would have thought that mites could actually help our plants? ( the right kind of mites that is.)
 
I tried using ladybugs one time that didn't really work out and id rather have fungus in a house than more bugs. Most plants already have fungus and I have added mycorrhizal fungi on my plants indoors.
 
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