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What are these, and how do I kill them? Pepper pest (lemmy.ca)
submitted 11 months ago by to c/gardening@lemmy.world
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These insects are plaguing the hot pepper plants in our greenhouse, and last year they killed the pepper plants that we brought indoors. I haven't noticed them being a problem when it was warmer out, I'm assuming the ladybugs were keeping them down.

How best to deal with them? We have an insecticidal soap that didn't work last year, tobacco plants that I could probably extract nicotine from, or I'm open to buying something if someone has a recommendation.

I live in Alberta, I think we're zone 3, if it helps

An close-up image of a pepper leaf with small insects on it
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[–] 2 points 11 months ago (1 child)

Looks to me like an aphid of some sort, though hard to tell.

If they are aphids, my normal strategy is to blast them off with a spray bottle of water that has a strong stream.

Obviously, that doesn't really kill them, and you'll miss some, but if you can be thorough and do it every day, you can really squash their populations. I actually think compressed air might be better than water (less messy), but i don't have something that would work well for it.

Make sure to get into buds where you have new growth coming in, because they really love fresh growth, and it's also a good hiding spot.

You can manually squash them, but then you give a lot of fuel for mold to feed off.

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