Quote:
Originally Posted by DocBrock
Is it unreasonable to expect having a container garden in southwest Florida that has zero aphids on the plants? So far my tomatoes are untouched, but my peppers all have a few aphids. My plants all look great, the young ones are growing steadily and the mature plants are producing like crazy. It's driving me nuts though, every little leaf at the growing tips has a couple aphids hiding in them. I've sprayed everything a few times with Safer End-All (combo rtu spray with pyrethrin, insecticidal soap, and neem oil) and the amount of aphids greatly decreases, but I keep anticipating seeing zero. I've even sat out there in the evening a few times and hand squished every aphid from every leaf of every plant before spraying them down thoroughly and moving them into the garage for the night. There always seems to be a couple more the following day. Not sure what to do or whether a few aphids isn't really a problem. I don't use any chemical fertilizers, everything is super low dose liquid nutrients added when I water. One is Dr. Earth Home Grown liquid biweekly, and then I'll use Fox Farm Big Bloom and General Hydroponics Cal-Mag monthly on my plants that are blossoming. Any help will be greatly appreciated before I turn into Bill Murray in Caddyshack.
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You can simply hose off aphids with a blast of water, but they will be back because they multiply very quickly. Aphids are easily killed with plain old soapy water, and you can spray that as often as you want. I would use a simple spray like Ivory liquid or dr. Bronner's, not a detergent, so don't use your liquid dish soap. That's only because I'm trying to keep it more organic for you because the liquid dish soap will for sure work to kill the aphids. If you keep it up every day for about a week you won't have anymore aphid issues on your peppers. They really like basil too. I've never seen anything on any of my tomato plants down here we just don't have that variety of aphids. Is this your first year in Florida?