A spider set up shop next to my plants under the lights.
I will see how she does.

Slugworth, I found a few cobs in my cobwebs :lol: So that's where they came from. It is really a type of house spider - and they don't care when I clear away their webs. They're back in jig time with a new one. :)

Aphid Solution
 

Last season when I overwintered pepper plants in the sunroom after taking all precautions (rinse roots, spray plants with Neem oil several times before bringing them in I still had an aphid problem.

Hell to pay from significant other for spraying plants with residue on the floor! Still had aphids and gnats.

I came up with a potential solution that reduced both aphids and gnats. Peppermint tea, diluted to 1/2 strength, watered from the bottom and let plants drain a couple of times after letting the plants dry out to about 2". Controlled but did not eliminate all aphids but gnats went away to gnat hell!

Peppermint tea eh! Good to know.:)
As before, baking soda worked. :D Yes I had to crush a few by hand, but no more aphids on the indoor plants after dusting around the inside rim of the pots. I guess if the ants were getting in, they stopped to try my borax laced 'honeydew substitute' , and came no more.


Now I have some tiny moth that mines the leaves... or so it appears. Got one by clapping my hands, there was nothing left to examine... :surprised::geek::?

As per usual one of my Meyer lemons is absolutely covered with aphids. The one I planted outside last fall is fine other than losing some tender foliage to cold weather even when covered with frost cloths. The ladybugs are taking care of any aphids outside on the four citrus growing in the yard but I am having a hard time with the ones on the covered porch. I may end up planting the other two Meyer lemons outside and hope they survive the winters but the Key lime has to be moved inside. It seems that the aphids like the lemons better than the lime for the past few years.

I am getting a really heavy soap buildup and I guess I am going to have to set them outside for a week during this mild weather and spray them with water and hope some aphids get on them. I have a ton of green lacewings in my border shrub which I had to prune last week and noticed hundreds of them flying around when I was cutting it. Maybe I should move them right next to the hedge.

Bill

Aphids just showed up in my enclosed carport. There is no heat on in there right now and it is cool. They are on a wintering over salvia that had no aphids last season but do now. Perhaps I'll try a baking powder solution and see how that goes. It seems the least harmful thing to try.

For plants brought in the house, it's probably a good idea to spray them a few days before with something that will do the job thoroughly. So something somewhat toxic I guess. Ideally, one would want to avoid it, but they're not fruiting, so it's not that big of a deal, and once you have them in the house, you pretty much will not get rid of them, and will spread to everything (like transplants).

Soap is a little less messy if you just apply foam. It kills them right away. Then spray off the soap residue.

I am fortunate to have invasive brown Asian lady beetles. As soon as they started coming inside, I didn't see any more aphids.

Well aphids still managed to get in one more time, for the last cilantro. :evil: They did not reinfest the remaining dill which had soda dusted around the inside rim of the pot though.


A bigger problem for me now is black vine weevils. They got into the house from the greenhouse I guess. Pretty sure I recognize their big bites on my cabbages. I have read up on the weevil, which also chowed heavily on my grapevine in the greenhouse last summer. But I haven't taken action yet, other than looking for adults in the (supposedly) obvious places. I need to get rid of these in greenhouse and indoors. Comments or advice welcome.