Well, today I finally gave up and decided to spray some of my chilli plants with an insecticide. I figured that after all my efforts to keep them organic they were eventually going to succumb to the aphids that were now sucking the life from them.
I decided to ACT!
Having spent many hours squishing/removing/flicking any aphids that I could see for weeks, I was now fed up. Today I took the affected plants outside and collectively sprayed them with a standard pesticide that deals with Aphid, Green & White Fly infestation. It is for use on all edible plants which is very important since I eat all my chillies.
Painstakingly I made sure that I got all surface area of all the leaves paying particular attention to the underside which is where these little pests prefer to hang out.
I removed the top layer of soil and refreshed it with new compost so that any aphids that where trying to hide from annihilation didn’t succeed.
It took the best part of the afternoon to debug 8 chilli plants but it was totally worth it to give them a new lease of life and a fighting chance, especially the Culinary Thai, Filius Blue, Jalapeno and the Scotch Bonnet which all have a healthy pod yield.
So the answer on this occasion for me was, To Spray.
Let me know if you had any recent experience with bugs and how you dealt with them. I’m always interested in unique ways to deal with the problem. Chillininja.
Chilli Ninja 