Aphids! Apua!

[luca]

Hi all,

I came home today and found that all my 3 chocolate habs were infested with aphids (kirvat)! The little bastards! The funny thing is that I have 15 plants (paper lanterns, ají amarillos, ají rojos, cayennes and choc. habs) but only the choc habs were infested with aphids.  Does anyone have an explanation to this?

Another thing, how can I get rid of aphids? I've googled for a solution, but it seems that everyone uses ladybirds or other biological weapons (of mass aphid destruction ;-) to get rid of them.  Does this work with outdoors plants? My chiles are growing in my balcony, so I guess that if I put some ladybirds or something else there, they'll just fly away... Any solution for getting rid of aphids once and for all?

Today I've squeezed them all by hand (or at least all those I could find), but that's certainly not very efficient...

Any help would be *very* appreciated!

Cheers,
Luca.

[Fatalii]

They always start with some plant, what plant will get infested first, seems to be quite random occurrence.

A soap solution is effective when growing outdoors (pinesoap is commonly used=mäntysuopa).
Mix it with water (~2-3%, I've just poured too much soap) and spray the plants from EVERYWHERE.
Let the soap suffocate the aphids for some time... half an hour perhaps to make sure most have died.

After that, spray the plants with water only to rinse off the soap.

You might have to repeat that several times on different days but it works!

Spraying the plants with a _cold_ water every day helps to prevent heavy aphid attacks.

[luca]

Thanks a lot for your fast reply! I appreciate it :-)

Do you know where I can get this pinesoap? Is it available in garden shops or...? Do other kinds of soap work? I have read somewhere that normal soap can damage the plants..

[Fatalii]

Just normal grocery stores, used for more nature-friendly cleaning purposes I guess... carpets and stuff like that.
Yes, some soaps might damage plants.

Just ask for "mäntysuopa" and you should get a 1 liter bottle!
Usually quite cheap stuff.

[TheBigX]

Well ladybirds do work very well agains aphids. The trick to get them to stay is that you plant them as larvae (=toukka), which are unable to fly. They will stay as larvae for several days eating up to 100 aphids a day, then they will pupate (=kotiloitua). In about 8 days the adult beetle will break through the pupal skin and start eating aphids once more. Furthermore, they will start mating and laying hundreds of eggs causing a huge ladybird population that the aphids have no chances against. In my experience they do not leave if there's enough aphids to feed on.

I actually do have a lot of larvae right now and it's starting to get hard to find food for them... I could mail you some in exchange for tabasco seeds or something...

[luca]

The ladybird solution sounds good! Especially for the long-term! Anyway, I'll buy some mäntysuopa today and apply it for now, before I can get hold of some ladybirds.  I've already sprayed all my plants with cold water this morning... I couldn't find any new aphids on them today, I think I've done a good thumb-squeeze job last evening

My girlfriend has some "orvokki" plants in the same balcony and they seem to be mega-crowded with aphids! Maybe that's good, because they will attract some aphids out of my chiles (as someone in another forum suggested would happen with "Nicandra" plants), but maybe that's also bad, because instead of getting rid of the aphids, the orvokit will be actually nurturing them... :evil:

[bassino]

As long as there are aphids in some plants, you will find them in your chillies sooner or later. So its best to try to get rid of them all. I started my aphid destruction campaign about one year ago and the population is still there, only much more smaller than before. Have to say I lived three months elsewhere so my campaign was not so effective all the time but still... After I managed to get them away off my chillies they started to eat my St. Paulias, Orchids and some other plants. In my opinion with mäntysuopa you can control the population but its hard to get rid of them all with it. So its best to use all the methods together like regular spraying with cold water, manual controlling with your hands and the good old mäntysuopa of course. Good luck with your battle anyway!

[TheBigX]

Interesting... I think the pansies we have (pansy=orvokki) in the yard are just about the only plants that aphids don't seem to have any interest in (they even started feeding on one of our Rhododendrons (I thought those are quite poisonous)). I did once find a huge slimy snail in one of their flowers though! It was quite discusting since I was removing the wilted flowers and one of them was surprisyngly heavy. It was like 5-6 centimetres long.

[JyriT]

Huge slimy snail.. Like those killersnail what media hyped last year.. these? : http://www.mtt.fi/palvelut/kasvinsuojelu/perustietoa/espanjansiruetana.html

[TheBigX]

It wasn't one of those, luckily. It was quite light, I think the underside was white and the back was brownish, quite close to beige.

[luca]

Slugs, yuck!

At least for this reason I'm glad I live in the 5th floor, so slugs probably won't get there so easily... Oops! Now I have to touch wood! ;-)

Anyway, thanks all for the aphids-war help.  I'll probably do as bassino mentioned and combine all efforts to make really sure I get rid of all those little bastards! Shouldn't be too hard, since I only have 15 plants...

[luca]

I'm still having problems with aphids :-( Many of my plants are getting curled leaves and when I look there are some green bastards sucking them!

I'm squeezing all the ones I can find with my fingers everyday, but they keep coming! I'm also spraying cold water on my plants everyday and this evening I'll spray some mäntysuopa to see if it helps.

I can't find the ladybird larvae that TheBigX sent me anymore.  Maybe they left or maybe they starved or, I hope so, they've just pupated in some hidden place where I can't see them.

I have one question, does mäntysuopa work in the long run? Or does it just kill the aphids that are currently in the plant? BTW, where do aphids come from? Do they fly to the plants or...? I always think I've killed them all in the morning, but when I get home in the evening there they are! Suckers!

[TheBigX]

I can't find the ladybird larvae that TheBigX sent me anymore.  Maybe they left or maybe they starved or, I hope so, they've just pupated in some hidden place where I can't see them.

So they never made it into adult beetles?  :shock:
If you're lucky, they did become adults and have already mated and soon their offsprings will hatch.   (All my larvae are adults now)

I have one question, does mäntysuopa work in the long run? Or does it just kill the aphids that are currently in the plant? BTW, where do aphids come from? Do they fly to the plants or...? I always think I've killed them all in the morning, but when I get home in the evening there they are! Suckers!

Pine soap (=mäntysuopa) only kills the adult aphids currently on the plant. It doesn't affect their eggs or aphids that come from somewhere else. You're quite right about how they come. Some of the aphids have wings and they are capable of flying. And the tricky thing is that just one aphid is enough. They are capable of increasing their numbers without mating (parthenogenetically).

PS. 3 of the 4 Paper Lantern seeds I received from you and sew have germinated.

EDIT make that 4 of 4

[luca]

So they never made it into adult beetles? :shock:
If you're lucky, they did become adults and have already mated and soon their offsprings will hatch. Smile (All my larvae are adults now)

Unfortunately the larvae you sent me have left/died :-( They're not there anymore.  And the aphids keep bugging the plants! I've killed hundreds manually and with pine soap, but they keeping showing up.  All the plants in our balcony are infected now and many of my chiles have curled leaves as a result :cry:  But I'll keep fighting them until my victory!  :evil:

PS. 3 of the 4 Paper Lantern seeds I received from you and sew have germinated.

EDIT make that 4 of 4

That's nice! So it means that all the paper lantern seeds sown from that batch so far have germinated! Very good results! :-)

[TheBigX]

You could try spraying them with a special chili-insectpoison. It's quite easy to make.

2 l water
1 very pungent hot pepper (you might want to put even more)
2 tbsp pinesoap

1. Put the hot pepper and some water in a mixer (leave the seeds!)
2. Filter away the chilipieces and add the rest of the water
3. Put it in a spraybottle and add the pinesoap
4. Spray it on those nasty aphids

This stuff is so strong that it'll make the entire household cough until it's evaporated. It seems to kill just about any kind of insect, even big flies. And obviously it's fully natural and safe to humans.

[Nike]

Just had to share a revelation I had about how mäntysuopa actually kills the insects; I always thought it "poisons" them like a pesticide, but now I read that it only removes the surface tension of the water,so that it penetrates into the insects` small breathing-holes and suffocates them! That sounds like a painful enough death for those little bastards  :twisted:

[luca]

Nice piece of scientific information ;-)

I knew that most insects actually "breath" through openings in the surface of their bodies, so I thought they would suffocate because of the water.  But I had no idea why pure water wouldn't kill them as well! Surface tension, of course :-)

Suffocating aphids... hmmmm somehow I started appreciating mäntysuopa even more! :mrgreen:

[luca]

The mäntysuopa technique seems to have worked quite well! I applied it 2 times with an interval of one week and it seems that I got rid of almost all the aphids.  There is still the odd one appearing from time to time, but nothing that's making me worry.

If they start showing up in considerable numbers again, I'll load my spray-gun and go to the battle again!

Thanks all for the help in my war against these bloody little creatures :-)

[Nike]

I think it would be the safest approach to keep applying those sprayings even if you don`t see them for a while; there might be the next generation still in eggs,and it only needs a couple of them laying eggs to multiply their numbers in a matter of days. Play safe   :wink:

[luca]

Yes, you're right.  I haven't been spraying them with mäntysuopa for about 10 days and they became infested with aphids again.  I guess I should spray them every week or so...  Someone in another forum said that spraying them with soap too often could stress the plants...

Anyway, it's good to know that when needed I can just spray them and those fucklings go away for a while ;-)