chilliman64 said:
if unsure about bugs, you have to kill them.
* rolls up newspaper, commences to thwacking chilliman64*
No! No! No!
Bad chilliman64...bad!
they can reproduce so quickly that while you take some time to identify whether or not they are good guys they can do irreparable damage. work out how many hours it took chilehunter to identify these bugs, enough time for several generations to destroy his entire crop! luckily they were good ones.
Oh, hogwash.
Even aphids take a couple of days to reach sexual maturity, and besides, peppers are sturdy plants, they can take a little munching. With the Internet at hand, bug ID is just a couple of clicks away. Not to mention it's only sensible to become familiar with the common insect pests in your area *before* your plants get infested.
The problem with a "kill it!!!!" attitude is that killing *all* the bugs on your plants indiscriminately actually makes it easier for the bad bugs like aphids or *spit!* thrips to recolonize in larger and larger numbers. Most beneficials have longer life cycles than the pests they feed on, so, they take longer to recover from being wiped out on a group of plants.
Generally, you're not going to kill all the bad bugs, like aphids, or else your plants can quickly be recolonized from the same source. In the time it takes one ladybug to grow up and become sexually mature, aphids can go through 4 to 8 generations, depending on the weather. Every time you wipe out the ladybugs, you give the aphids time to build their numbers up to where they *can* dmamge a plant.
Now, are you going to listen to reason, or shall I commence to thwacking again?