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pests Poor guy needs " Stuff around the house" help with Aphids please.

Arkennon

Arkennon

So today I decided to change the fencing around my cucumbers as they looked like they needed more climbing room. I am currently growing, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers of all kinds, several fruits, onions, and some others. As I was rearranging the cucumbers I noticed some of the leaves were horribly curled and shriveled, as I looked closer I could see ants running around those leaves like crazy. I knew then what was going on but actually said a quick prayer that I was wrong, I wasn't. As I looked into the curled leaf I saw them, giant clusters of Aphids in each curled leaf. I instantly panicked and set to scraping up change around the house. I put together enough money to buy a bottle of Garden Safe 3 in 1. I do not know if it was the best choice or not but it was what I could afford, it did seem to kill the Aphids pretty fast. Now here is my problem, first of all I started checking all my other plants, I found 1 or 2 others here and there but nothing like I found on the cucumbers, so I sprayed pretty much everything preemptively, which used pretty much the entire bottle. Then I read that I need to spray my plants several more times to kill newly hatched and stragglers, well now I do not have enough. So my question is, is there anything I might have around my house that I can use? 
 
Just as a heads up, I know $5 or $6 is cheap, but I am currently disabled and can not work until I am done with surgeries, so I have no money to spare, ( I recently had an issue on another forum where someone went off on me for not working basically, I just want everyone to know I am not a bum or anything, as soon as I am physically able to I will be back to work ) but my garden is my little piece of peace right now, and I have put everything I have into it financially and can not stand to think of losing my plants to those bugs. So if there is anything that one might have around the house that can be made into a Aphid killing spray I would greatly appreciate the knowledge. I am in full on panic mode right now.
 
Also, I read somewhere that some people make sprays with pepper powders? I can not remember what it said exactly but if it is a viable option I could do that also as I have a little Bhut powder still.
 
Thank you very much in advance for any and all helpful advice.
 
Sincerely, Reverend Michael Massey
 
meinchoh said:
Try 1 cup vegetable oil, 1 and 1/2 cups water and 2 teaspoons dish soap...mix and spray.
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This!!  I use just soap and water and it works great but the oil helps it stick as well.
 
I assume it is the soap that kills them somehow, so does it matter what kind of dish soap or anything else? How much should I spray? How often? I know this may seem silly to some but I am already getting a few sprayers ready. I want to knock them all out first thing in the morning!

Also, should I wait a few days or anything since I just sprayed them with the Garden Safe today? I am sorry about all the questions just a bit panicked right now.
 
there are suggestions for steeping the leaves of tomatoes (nightshade family) and spraying with the strained solution. Chiles are in the nightshade family if you can't find tomato leaves. Just an option. Google for more specifics. Best wishes for a speedy extermination!
OH and I've seen the dish soap remedy list Ivory dish soap which is a pretty mild dish soap. Others have used Dawn or other concentrated dish soap which burned the heck out of the plants. If using a concentrate, reduce the amount proportionaltly.
 
Soap shouldn't have any fragrance or antibacterial in it. Think Prehesile uses tick and flea soap. Other people use neem oil with the soap and water.
Hope that helps.
 
Angie
 
salsalady said:
there are suggestions for steeping the leaves of tomatoes (nightshade family) and spraying with the strained solution. Chiles are in the nightshade family if you can't find tomato leaves. Just an option. Google for more specifics. Best wishes for a speedy extermination!
OH and I've seen the dish soap remedy list Ivory dish soap which is a pretty mild dish soap. Others have used Dawn or other concentrated dish soap which burned the heck out of the plants. If using a concentrate, reduce the amount proportionaltly.
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so pepper plant leaves are poisonous? why do things still eat them?
 
some things are immune to things..... like how birds can eat chiles, fly around an poop out seeds as part of the propogation of the species.... I'm NOT a botanist or even that good of a grower. Don't really know all that much about it, just have read a lot.
 
salsalady said:
there are suggestions for steeping the leaves of tomatoes (nightshade family) and spraying with the strained solution. Chiles are in the nightshade family if you can't find tomato leaves. Just an option. Google for more specifics. Best wishes for a speedy extermination!
OH and I've seen the dish soap remedy list Ivory dish soap which is a pretty mild dish soap. Others have used Dawn or other concentrated dish soap which burned the heck out of the plants. If using a concentrate, reduce the amount proportionaltly.
Click to expand...
 
 
Spicytigger said:
Soap shouldn't have any fragrance or antibacterial in it. Think Prehesile uses tick and flea soap. Other people use neem oil with the soap and water.
Hope that helps.
 
Angie
Click to expand...
 
This explains a lot.  My soapy mixed burned the hell out of my peppers.  Next time I'll try the Ivory.
 
Well, I went out this morning to take another look at everything after the spray down of last night with the Garden Safe. It seems to have done a decent job from what I can tell so far, I am going to wait a few days and spray with a soap solution as recommended by a lot of you. We have Palmolive, I hope that works well also. 
 
One thing that is baffling me though is, it seems as if the Aphid clusters were only on my Cucumber's, I have 8 sweet pepper plants right next to them and after very thoroughly searching all of them I did not find a single Aphid. Now, I have a lot of room and have several raised beds a good distance from each other but have been checking all my plants very closely all morning and besides a few beetles and little tiny flying insects I am not really finding much else. So is there a "Cucumber Aphid" or something? And what makes me even more suspicious is that there was a LOT of Aphids on my cucumbers, it does not make sense at all they wouldn't be all over my sweet peppers. Unless I am missing something due to lack of experience or something?
 
That is very odd. It seems with all my pests they go for the cucs last. I've even had to cut back my cucs from takin over other plants spots lol. They seem to much prefer the peppers followed by the tomatoes. My habanero has been getting ravaged by aphids, the little buggers.

Best of luck to you! Neem oil and manual crushing seems to work pretty well for me.
 
Well, as I was looking through my cherry tomato plants I did notice 3 or 4 aphids among them also tonight, I used the last of the bottle of Garden Safe ( Which has Neem Oil I think ) and continued to watch the Aphids just go about like nothing was wrong. So I decided to take a single Aphid and pour the last drops of the bottle onto it directly and it seemed to have no effect at all until a big enough drop hit it to smother it. I think I may have some form of Super Aphid or something.....
 
I use a tick and flea soap bar which has Pyrenthium in it I add a small amount and dissolve it in some water and add a little salad oil I use about 1/4 cup to half gallon of water.
Don't use any Dish soap that has bleach in it, also you could try a 1% hydrogen peroxide mix with a small amount of dish soap.
Diotamaous Earth dusted on the plants will kill them out also. Sorry about the spelling.
I know what its like being disabled I've been that way for close to 10 years now and just had surgery to remove a small tumor in my guts and am doing some chemo. The worse part is I can't eat any hot peppers for awhile along with running things through a blender. So far I have have just a few Aphids raise their heads and when they do I spray them down.
 
Arkennon said:
Would Extra Virgin Olive Oil work in place of the vegetable oil?
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Yes, especially if your aphids are "upper class" :D
Arkennon said:
Well, as I was looking through my cherry tomato plants I did notice 3 or 4 aphids among them also tonight, I used the last of the bottle of Garden Safe ( Which has Neem Oil I think ) and continued to watch the Aphids just go about like nothing was wrong. So I decided to take a single Aphid and pour the last drops of the bottle onto it directly and it seemed to have no effect at all until a big enough drop hit it to smother it. I think I may have some form of Super Aphid or something.....
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Iirc, neem doesn't kill them rather it makes them 'phids Infertile.

The circle of life for them is like 20 days, so the population should run out of steam in about 2 weeks...
 
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