Our first aphid assault this year!
Posted: Wed Feb 23, 2011 2:05 am
Hi,
The past four days have been absolutely gorgeous! Plants in the greenhouse have done incredibly well. We had four plants left over from last fall...green peppers. Anyhow, tonight we noticed that these plants had shiny stuff all over the leaves. We looked closely and we saw hundreds upon hundreds of aphid eggs, dead little ones, and a few live and growing green ones.
Panic set in quickly so we scanned the new seedlings. They all seemed quite okay. Grabbed our organic spray bottle, pumped it up, and sprayed all of our plants. It contains 'neem oil'. It really helped last year so we're hoping it is still effective.
Ants? We have fire ants. They were building a mound in our greenhouse. So, I sprinkled cinnamon around the mound on one day...and again a few days later. We noticed they were gone tonight. We did find ants in one of those infested plants...not sure if they just moved or if that was a different colony.
Do you have any home remedies you like to use? We're in our second year of organic methods and would be curious to learn how you might deal with issues.
Regards,
Chuck
The past four days have been absolutely gorgeous! Plants in the greenhouse have done incredibly well. We had four plants left over from last fall...green peppers. Anyhow, tonight we noticed that these plants had shiny stuff all over the leaves. We looked closely and we saw hundreds upon hundreds of aphid eggs, dead little ones, and a few live and growing green ones.
Panic set in quickly so we scanned the new seedlings. They all seemed quite okay. Grabbed our organic spray bottle, pumped it up, and sprayed all of our plants. It contains 'neem oil'. It really helped last year so we're hoping it is still effective.
Ants? We have fire ants. They were building a mound in our greenhouse. So, I sprinkled cinnamon around the mound on one day...and again a few days later. We noticed they were gone tonight. We did find ants in one of those infested plants...not sure if they just moved or if that was a different colony.
Do you have any home remedies you like to use? We're in our second year of organic methods and would be curious to learn how you might deal with issues.
Regards,
Chuck