You will get aphids. I just got my first order of ladybugs.

john

Wow dude. He _WILL_ get aphids?

Houses here don't usually have basements. Why are there always aphids there?

What do they eat when there aren't any plants?

Have you tried green lacewing larvae? I used ladybugs once and they worked great but my buddy swears on the lacewing. Now I need preying mantids to eat the damn grasshoppers and walking sticks. I even got a few tomato horn worms for the first time this year. I hate em. The walking sticks are dumb and don't eat much during the day. I come home from work and cut them in half. Those worms just chomp down constantly and they shoot green and yellow and brown goo out when you smash them.

-HabBob

Guess I can't rely on the spiders to do the trick, eh? There are an awful lot of them. Well, the good news is I only need the plants to hang on for ripening. Once that happens we'll likely compost them and the critters.

Anyone know a way to trap ladybugs outside to bring inside? I don't need 1,500 of them, I was thinking more like a dozen would do nice. We only have 9 plants.

If you are only keeping them inside for ripening you may not need anything if you can tolerate some aphids.

Thanks John, that's good news indeed. I can tolerate some aphids. The Hot Wax will be ready soon, so I'm not worried about them. Getting some nice orange and red on 'em. Everything else is taking it's sweet time, but we'll eat 'em green if we have too.

I'm still hopeful about the spiders. The guys we have are very good at catching crawlies. We've seen many an ant cocoon downstairs. Time will tell.

There are no "natural" detriments to the aphids already on your plants such as wind, rain, and the insects that feast on aphids. Just to bring them in until you get your harvest in will work great though. It usually takes over a month - depending on the size of the plants, to really develop a serious infestation of aphids. I brought in over a hundred lady bugs last year and placed them on my plants, but it still didn't work. Most insects are limited in their lifetimes, and the daylight duration also starts them into death. A controlled environment (closet, box etc.) with lights on for 14 to 18 hours would probably be beneficial though. I am trying this year instead of just placing them in front of south facing sliding door. My habs were COVERED with aphids in 5-6 weeks, and it was ghoulish let me tell you! Neem oil may also help if you wish to keep them over the winter. Good luck!!! TiMo

Well, I think I may be alright. Since moving them inside the ripening is just taking off. Many of the Hot Wax are nearly fully ripe, a few Poblanos are on their way, one of the Orange Bells is orange (but surprisingly soft), and the first pod on my Cayapeno hybrids is almost completely red... yay for seeds!

The Jalapenos that actually look like Jalas (but are hot hot hot, both "penos" came from the same parent plant) are still green, but that's all good, I like those green. And the slow as dirt Anaheims are all still green too.

No signs of infestation yet, yay again. I give them about 12 hours of light, and when I say a couple of CFs, I mean that literally, there are only two bulbs for all 9 plants. I'm not going to try to over winter them... well, maybe the Cayapeno since it's unique.

- Mark

New to this forum, and wanted to share a discovery i made on a property i purchased recently in south texas. 18 acres of bird dropped chile pequin bushes. A year ago, we counted 5,000 of these plants. This year there are more plants, lots more. We started picking the chiles this week and so far between two of us we are harvesting about five pounds in about 3 hours and we havent even made a dent on the crop. I would like to find a buyer for green and or red (fresh and dried)chiles. These are totaly organic we never water then or add anything to the bushes, the just grow crazy.Since they grow wild we encounter rattle snakes, copperhead snakes, scorpions, poison oak and ivy, and all kinds of little critters that roam the bushes. We pick with lots of caution,side arms and ice cold beer. I will post pics later

Ok. I'm pretty uninformed when it comes to aphids. If I hang my chili peppers across my sunny kitchen window for a few weeks (or untill dry)...will I get aphids too? And if I do....are they hard to remove when the pepper is done drying? Thx.

The ripening is cranking right along now. The Cayapeno have one fully ripe pod and several that are on their way. Hot Wax look great, Pobs coming along nicely, even orange bells are finally mostly orange instead of that sickly pale yellow. The only hold outs are the Anaheim and Jala. I'll post pics when the big harvest happens. For now, we just snip what we're gonna eat.

No signs of aphids yet, but the spiders have already taken up position to nail the little white flies that are everywhere. Go spiders!

chilechuey,

You might want to post your question as a separate post so that it will get more readership, and hopefully some more response.