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Spicegeist 2018

I started a few plants in the fall and have been overwintering them.  I'm mostly focusing on a handful of my special bhut crosses.  Bottom left in this photo is a Chiltepin.  Bottom center is a coffee plant I grew from seed.  I spent a good part of this weekend squishing aphids.
 

 
Here's a C. galapagoense that's spent most of its life under grow lights after I started it in the fall.  It flowered and produced fruit without any pollinators present:

 
I know these don't look very impressive, but I'm just trying to keep them alive until warmer weather.  They are 1/2 C. galapagoense x Chiltepin and 1/2 Superhot (my own mostly bhut cross):
 
 
Click to expand...
jedisushi06 said:
Who's got the aphid farm?
Click to expand...
 
If you had told me at the start, how quickly those multiply, I would have moved away, napalmed the house, and saved myself a lot of frustration.
 
Y'all remember the tribbles episode on Star Trek (the original series)?
 
Yeah. Aphids are like that.
But worse.
 
You see a dozen one day. You crush them all. You are a conquerer. They squish beneath your fingers until there are none left to be found and crushed. You giggle with evil satisfaction as you wash the sticky guts off of your fingers. HAH! Not so damn tough, are ya? No, I KILLED YOU ALL.
 
Then you check and a few days later, there's a hundred. Oh! GOOD GRIEF! WHAT THE HELL! You go on a rampage, this time leaving absolutely no leaf unturned. You mercilessly commit genocide. HOURS tick by and you are finally convinced you got them all. Even then, you go back and check every few hours just to see if you did.
 
A few more days pass. This time there's THOUSANDS. MY GOD. WHAT THE HELL. It's at this point you start doing research. Try soap sprays. 
 
Ok soap sprays kill aphids. But they also cause half the leafs to wilt and drop. Crap. 
 
At this point, or sometime near to it, the nightmares start. They're not only infesting your plants, they are in your dreams at night. Cold sweats, you wake up at 2 AM and know.. just KNOW in your gut, if you go down to the basement, the plants will be alive and crawling with aphids. They'll be MOVING.
 
It was about that time I was hitting the button to order 1,000 ladybugs and wrapping the basement in plastic like some damn hazardous waste cleanup site. 
 
1,000 didn't cut it. They made a dent, but the ladybugs killed themselves off by eating too much.
So you say F-IT! and order 5,000 of the damn things. Now you're also seeing some of the first batch attacking the TV at night and the wife is yelling at you when she finds them under her pillow at night. So you go out and buy lady-bug food and you mix it and spray it on your plants to try to keep them contained to that area.
 
Doesn't work. You know what happens after ladybugs mate with each other? They fly off to be alone. They're right cold one-night-stand bastards that way and they just fly off to be alone when they die.
 
So now there's a few hundred ladybugs attacking your TV at night and your wife starts casually dropping the D- word at dinner. And I'm not talking about the fun D-Word (you know what I'm talking about gents, the one part of your body that overrides all of your intelligence). I'm talking about the un-fun D-Word that involves taking the half of your s*** that isn't covered in lady bugs. Like one of the mustangs parked in the garage. Maybe both. There's no damn lady bugs in the garage.
 
The worst part is the rat bastard aphids also got on my seedlings and THOSE got covered with the things too. So not only do they mess up my overwinters, but now they're causing me problems with all the NEW plants I'm growing. 
 
No man. That was it for me and overwinters. 
 
No more. Not again. No way. 
 
That nightmare still occasionally haunts my dreams.
 
TrentL said:
 
If you had told me at the start, how quickly those multiply, I would have moved away, napalmed the house, and saved myself a lot of frustration.
 
Y'all remember the tribbles episode on Star Trek (the original series)?
 
Yeah. Aphids are like that.
But worse.
 
You see a dozen one day. You crush them all. You are a conquerer. They squish beneath your fingers until there are none left to be found and crushed. You giggle with evil satisfaction as you wash the sticky guts off of your fingers. HAH! Not so damn tough, are ya? No, I KILLED YOU ALL.
 
Then you check and a few days later, there's a hundred. Oh! GOOD GRIEF! WHAT THE HELL! You go on a rampage, this time leaving absolutely no leaf unturned. You mercilessly commit genocide. HOURS tick by and you are finally convinced you got them all. Even then, you go back and check every few hours just to see if you did.
 
A few more days pass. This time there's THOUSANDS. MY GOD. WHAT THE HELL. It's at this point you start doing research. Try soap sprays. 
 
Ok soap sprays kill aphids. But they also cause half the leafs to wilt and drop. Crap. 
 
At this point, or sometime near to it, the nightmares start. They're not only infesting your plants, they are in your dreams at night. Cold sweats, you wake up at 2 AM and know.. just KNOW in your gut, if you go down to the basement, the plants will be alive and crawling with aphids. They'll be MOVING.
 
It was about that time I was hitting the button to order 1,000 ladybugs and wrapping the basement in plastic like some damn hazardous waste cleanup site. 
 
1,000 didn't cut it. They made a dent, but the ladybugs killed themselves off by eating too much.
So you say F-IT! and order 5,000 of the damn things. Now you're also seeing some of the first batch attacking the TV at night and the wife is yelling at you when she finds them under her pillow at night. So you go out and buy lady-bug food and you mix it and spray it on your plants to try to keep them contained to that area.
 
Doesn't work. You know what happens after ladybugs mate with each other? They fly off to be alone. They're right cold one-night-stand bastards that way and they just fly off to be alone when they die.
 
So now there's a few hundred ladybugs attacking your TV at night and your wife starts casually dropping the D- word at dinner. And I'm not talking about the fun D-Word (you know what I'm talking about gents, the one part of your body that overrides all of your intelligence). I'm talking about the un-fun D-Word that involves taking the half of your s*** that isn't covered in lady bugs. Like one of the mustangs parked in the garage. Maybe both. There's no damn lady bugs in the garage.
 
The worst part is the rat bastard aphids also got on my seedlings and THOSE got covered with the things too. So not only do they mess up my overwinters, but now they're causing me problems with all the NEW plants I'm growing. 
 
No man. That was it for me and overwinters. 
 
No more. Not again. No way. 
 
That nightmare still occasionally haunts my dreams.
Click to expand...
LOL [emoji23][emoji23][emoji23][emoji23]


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
TrentL said:
 
If you had told me at the start, how quickly those multiply, I would have moved away, napalmed the house, and saved myself a lot of frustration.
 
Y'all remember the tribbles episode on Star Trek (the original series)?
 
Yeah. Aphids are like that.
But worse.
 
You see a dozen one day. You crush them all. You are a conquerer. They squish beneath your fingers until there are none left to be found and crushed. You giggle with evil satisfaction as you wash the sticky guts off of your fingers. HAH! Not so damn tough, are ya? No, I KILLED YOU ALL.
 
Then you check and a few days later, there's a hundred. Oh! GOOD GRIEF! WHAT THE HELL! You go on a rampage, this time leaving absolutely no leaf unturned. You mercilessly commit genocide. HOURS tick by and you are finally convinced you got them all. Even then, you go back and check every few hours just to see if you did.
 
A few more days pass. This time there's THOUSANDS. MY GOD. WHAT THE HELL. It's at this point you start doing research. Try soap sprays. 
 
Ok soap sprays kill aphids. But they also cause half the leafs to wilt and drop. Crap. 
 
At this point, or sometime near to it, the nightmares start. They're not only infesting your plants, they are in your dreams at night. Cold sweats, you wake up at 2 AM and know.. just KNOW in your gut, if you go down to the basement, the plants will be alive and crawling with aphids. They'll be MOVING.
 
It was about that time I was hitting the button to order 1,000 ladybugs and wrapping the basement in plastic like some damn hazardous waste cleanup site. 
 
1,000 didn't cut it. They made a dent, but the ladybugs killed themselves off by eating too much.
So you say F-IT! and order 5,000 of the damn things. Now you're also seeing some of the first batch attacking the TV at night and the wife is yelling at you when she finds them under her pillow at night. So you go out and buy lady-bug food and you mix it and spray it on your plants to try to keep them contained to that area.
 
Doesn't work. You know what happens after ladybugs mate with each other? They fly off to be alone. They're right cold one-night-stand bastards that way and they just fly off to be alone when they die.
 
So now there's a few hundred ladybugs attacking your TV at night and your wife starts casually dropping the D- word at dinner. And I'm not talking about the fun D-Word (you know what I'm talking about gents, the one part of your body that overrides all of your intelligence). I'm talking about the un-fun D-Word that involves taking the half of your s*** that isn't covered in lady bugs. Like one of the mustangs parked in the garage. Maybe both. There's no damn lady bugs in the garage.
 
The worst part is the rat bastard aphids also got on my seedlings and THOSE got covered with the things too. So not only do they mess up my overwinters, but now they're causing me problems with all the NEW plants I'm growing. 
 
No man. That was it for me and overwinters. 
 
No more. Not again. No way. 
 
That nightmare still occasionally haunts my dreams.
Click to expand...
Funniest $hit I've read in a long long time! :ROFL:
 
Jubnat said:
Man, I'm excited to see the 1/2 C. galapagoense x Chiltepin and 1/2 Superhot cross.  What generation is it?  What is the fruit like if you have gotten any yet?
Click to expand...
 
I grew the galapa x chiltepin last season, the plant was huge like a tree and the fruit were pretty much what you would expect as a cross of those two varieties.  As for offspring from this, i.e. my new crosses, no fruit yet, just a few flowers on one of the 1/2 superhot to give me pollen which I pollinated my 100% galapa with to get the 75% seedlings I'm now growing...
 
I also realized that I mistyped a detail about my coffee plants: I left them outside for the SUMMER not the winter... hopefully that was an obvious typo for anyone reading...
 
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