Yesterday I saw aphids on my little broccoli sets that are under the lights! How the heck did they get there? I noticed them when I was watering all that stuff. This is an absolute first time for those showing up on anything under the lights. Harumph!

I mixed up a very small amount of insecticidal soap, poured it into a little misting bottle and spritzed them good. It was just a four pack of broccoli and the aphids hadn't bothered the parsley sitting nextdoor. The parsley got spritzed too just in case. You can't let those little bastiges get a toe hold anywhere especially indoors where there aren't any lady bugs!

This happens to me every winter. I usually bring in a plant from outside and it will have eggs on it. Then those buggers find my seedlings.

I do everything i can, but i can never get rid of them completely, until i take the plants outside.

Lots of have removal is the best approach in my experience

The invasive orange Asian lady beetles, which like to come inside in winter, will eat aphids.

I had this problem last year, I mentioned it in that seed-starting mix thread. I couldn't figure out where they came from either.

Ugh... my nightmare! Aphids have been a huge problem for me. My windows are old, is part of the problem at least. The wood has shrunk, there are gaps and places for ants to get in. And this is where I get my aphids, pretty sure. I have pretty much given up trying to grow peppers, because they get full of aphids when it's still too early or cold to put them outside and expect a harvest.
I am not sure about the eggs situation. But I did a crazy thing. After potting up a huge amount of greens in pristine mix, I could not resist rescuing my two containers of Sugar Sprint peas from the greenhouse when the temperature bottomed out. I brought them up to my office, which is far from the others in the basement, and I'm just watching them like a hawk every day. I know a few aphids got onto them very late in the season. I caught and crushed several winged ones that had landed on these plants. I just don't know if they were in an egg laying condition or what.

Bower wrote: ↑Tue Feb 08, 2022 12:35 pmI have pretty much given up trying to grow peppers, because they get full of aphids when it's still too early or cold to put them outside and expect a harvest.

I brought a pepper plant in a grow bag into my unheated-but-above-freezing attached garage for the winter, because it had a lot of still-green peppers on it and I was hoping it would make it through the winter and have a head start on spring, even though it had some weird little holes in the leaves that I assumed were some kind of blight.

Well, besides forgetting to water it a few times, it started looking really sickly and I found it had a lot of aphids on it, which I picked off with a paper towel, but wound up cutting the plant down later because it got worse...not sure if it was the blight or the aphids. Which reminds me I need to do some sort of soil drench like now to kill anything in there...because it's not that long until planting time!

If you see any ants, they could be farming your aphids. Ants will dig up aphid eggs from outdoors, bring them inside to place on your plants, guard the egg until it hatches and then guard the aphids. The sap excreted by the aphids is almost pure sugar, so ants raise them like cattle.

Setec Astronomy wrote: ↑Tue Feb 08, 2022 1:02 pm Well, besides forgetting to water it a few times, it started looking really sickly and I found it had a lot of aphids on it, which I picked off with a paper towel, but wound up cutting the plant down later because it got worse...

Have you ever pruned back a pepper plant brought indoors? If not you'll be surprised how well it's going to do. I did that one year and it put out a ton of branches that all put out a ton of peppers. A fun little project.

GoDawgs wrote: ↑Tue Feb 08, 2022 5:34 pm

Setec Astronomy wrote: ↑Tue Feb 08, 2022 1:02 pm Well, besides forgetting to water it a few times, it started looking really sickly and I found it had a lot of aphids on it, which I picked off with a paper towel, but wound up cutting the plant down later because it got worse...

Have you ever pruned back a pepper plant brought indoors? If not you'll be surprised how well it's going to do. I did that one year and it put out a ton of branches that all put out a ton of peppers. A fun little project.

I second this. Is pretty cool i even took the opportunity and did some crosses.

Unfortunately, this is how i get my aphids.....

GoDawgs wrote: ↑Tue Feb 08, 2022 5:34 pmHave you ever pruned back a pepper plant brought indoors? If not you'll be surprised how well it's going to do. I did that one year and it put out a ton of branches that all put out a ton of peppers. A fun little project.

I haven't even graduated to topping a pepper seedling yet (this year, if I get my nerve up...honestly last year I didn't know it was a thing). Is there a different principle for a grown plant?

First, there are two sides to the pepper topping thing. Some say it helps production and others say not. It does for me is all I can say.

When I brought that Gypsy pepper in, I let it finish ripening the peppers that were on it and then cut it HARD!

2/17/18 Cut hard:



Here it's starting to flush back, 3/15/18:



Setting blooms 3/23:



Setting peppers 4/12:



Peppers! 6/22

The best tactical nuke is a massage of dawn dish soap suds. It will immediately kill any bug on contact. Wash the soap off afterward.

Aphids reproduce from eggs, however the only time they actually lay an egg is when they somehow seem to know winter is coming. Normally they incubate their eggs inside their bodies, in summer or indoors. The last aphids in the fall will not live long enough to see their eggs hatch, so they bury them in the ground instead. For a dumb bug, they have some impressive survival behaviors.

Eureka @Cole_Robbie you've named a soap I haven't tried, and actually have some of it in the house. I was wondering whether it was much good for the bug scene as I was washing up the 1020 trays.
I have found a few little things on the pea leaves that "might" be an aphid egg all by its lonesome, resulting in a somewhat frenzied egg hunt. Wonder if I should just pre-emptively Dawn the plants? Or must I wait for some varmint to hatch?

Bower wrote: ↑Wed Feb 09, 2022 6:18 pm Eureka @Cole_Robbie you've named a soap I haven't tried, and actually have some of it in the house. I was wondering whether it was much good for the bug scene as I was washing up the 1020 trays.
I have found a few little things on the pea leaves that "might" be an aphid egg all by its lonesome, resulting in a somewhat frenzied egg hunt. Wonder if I should just pre-emptively Dawn the plants? Or must I wait for some varmint to hatch?

I don't think the soap will do much to the eggs unless they happen to fall off. Getting all the soap off the plant afterward can be difficult. I try to not do it unless I see bugs.

@Bower I was watching a video about some uses of H2O2, aphid sprays and soil treatments were mentioned.

Tx @pondgardner ! This is something else I haven't tried. And by golly, I have some kicking around in the basement too.
I suppose it's foolish for me to just hope that no aphids will appear, the little 'eggs' are really just bits of sand, and so on...
One thing for sure, if they do hatch they want to be dispatched immediately.
The peas are flowering and putting out buds like crazy... poor things have been in suspended animation for over a month I guess too cold to grow...
I can't tell you how happy I would be to eat a Sugar Sprint pea right now.

GoDawgs wrote: ↑Wed Feb 09, 2022 2:44 pm First, there are two sides to the pepper topping thing. Some say it helps production and others say not. It does for me is all I can say.

When I brought that Gypsy pepper in, I let it finish ripening the peppers that were on it and then cut it HARD!

Here it's starting to flush back, 3/15/18:

Setting blooms 3/23:

Setting peppers 4/12:

Peppers! 6/22

I wish we'd had this exchange a month ago before I hacked mine down and threw it on the compost heap, I would have given the pruning a try, couldn't have hurt, even though I think the plant was too sick anyway. Next year.

Before I germinate my plants, I make sure no other green thing is in the same room. There's always a chance of some aphid hiding one one.

H2O2 works great for soil treatment. I haven't seen much success with it against Aphids, but it works wonders against the soil "knats"

I've given up overwintering peppers because of the aphid problem. I've done upside down dunks and swishing in a bucket of very soapy water so every inch of leaf and stem is well coated, and letting the soap dry before hosing the plant off, and discarding the upper inch of dirt in the pot. Still, some eggs or infants must survive because in about 4-5 weeks I begin to see green aphids again. One year I enclosed the plant in a trash bag with some of those stinky toxic (can't remember if they were discs or sheets) things to rid insects from closets. I found lots of dead aphids when I opened the bag after a day or two, but there must have been unaffected eggs left, because again, a few weeks later the aphids were back. Every time I find aphids in the house during the winter, they eventually spread to my new pepper seedlings even though they are on a different floor of the house. Just not worth the hassle.

I have hanging fuchsias that also can harbor aphids. To overwinter them, I cut them back severely to a few bare stems, remove any green leaves left. Remove some of the top soil from the pot and spray all with soapy water. We used to be gone for the month of January, so I packed the surface of the pot with plastic grocery bags to prevent evaporation, so I assume any eggs left to hatch would be left without food or a way of easy escape. I have not had aphid problems with them since I started doing that. I think maybe covering the soil that way would also work on peppers if the hatch is coming from the soil.