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sweetiepie
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Re: What's wrong with my peppers?

Thanks imafan, that is great info on bugs. What kind of alcohol can you use? Rubbing or like beer or rum or etc.? Oil such as vegetable, I am guessing not motor oil? Can you use lard that is melted down? I have lots of butter. Can you use that?

imafan26
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I use 70% rubbing alcohol straight out of the bottle. You cannot use it in the heat of the day or it burns. It works on most things. Simple green works too.

Inside the house I use windex, 409, and tylex on bugs. The only thing it doesn't kill are the soldier ants, they are a tougher breed of ant but the workers die quick. Flying insects drop like a bomb.

Here are some other home remedies from Dr. Koob of the UH extension service.
https://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/uhmg/downlo ... ecipes.pdf

Usually you would use a light oil like cannola or vegetable oil. You want to stay away from the animal fats, that tends to attract vermin, for the same reason you want to avoid animal parts in the compost pile. Lard likes to cake when it gets cold so it might not be a good thing on the plants.

However, cow milk makes a good fungicide for roses and powdery mildew on other plants.

Put your pantry to work, cinnamon has been used by orchidists for years as a natural fungicide sprinkled on orchid roots. You do have to repeat it though it doesn't last a long time.

The milk recipe varies from site to site 50:50 milk water to a 10% solution, organic vs skim milk. Whatever works! One orchid grower used 2% milk to dip her pruners in (after each cut) while cutting her orchids flowers to prevent disease transmission.

https://www.abc.net.au/gardening/stories/s1484689.htm
https://groundtoground.org/2011/12/27/na ... ur-garden/

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rainbowgardener
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Alcohol would be rubbing alcohol, although beer makes a good trap for slugs. Put the beer in a shallow dish, like maybe a jar lid, and bury the dish slightly so that the edge is about level with the ground. Slugs come and drown themselves in the beer.

Neem oil is used against any leaf eating bugs. Spray it on the leaves. When the bugs ingest it, it disrupts their systems and stops them from eating and eventually they die. Other oils, such as horticultural oil can be sprayed on bugs to smother them - clogs their spiracles so they can't breathe. I don't know that lard or butter would work well in a sprayer. A light vegetable oil might. But that only works when sprayed directly on them. Neem oil can be sprayed any time and taken in when they eat it.

But aphids and stinkbugs are not leaf eaters, they are pierce/ suck and so the Neem oil would not work well against them, except used like any other oil, sprayed directly on them.

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MichaelC
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I really don't think the problem with these plants is coming from insect infestation, though I suspect it may be a disease that peppers are prone to, spread by insects. I think the disease came from one mini bell plant that I bought from a garden store, when I should have known better. I knew it didn't quite look right. It was the last one on the shelf of a variety I particularly wanted to grow for my young daughter, who is finally showing some interest in eating peppers. The other three plants were from a very reputable local farm, and looked perfect when I put them in the ground.

I'll take some current pictures of these four pepper plants and post them tomorrow.

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MichaelC
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Here are some pictures I took of my padrons. We ate a few good tasting fruit from one of them the other day. The nasty spot in picture four is a bird turd.
peppers1.jpg
peppers2.jpg
peppers3.jpg
peppers4.jpg

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MichaelC
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Big changes for my pepper area! A local gardening expert told me today that an atypical bacterial, airborne blight came through the area this year due to weather conditions and he thinks that's what hit my garden.

1) I pulled the poor little mini red bell plant. Its fruit were mostly blighted.

2) The padrons and orange bell seem to be miraculously recovering from what was ailing them. These three plants came from a very reputable local grower, Love Apple Farms, and I'm highly impressed with their resiliency!

3) The expert I met today, at a gardening fair, had a few flats of free pepper plants on offer in addition to his seeds he was selling. How could I say no to free? I couldn't. So four more plants went in the ground this evening, about three more than I have room for.

I hope the new plants do well, they looked very healthy. He said they were extra inventory from a commercial grower friend. They were quite tall, about a foot, with most of the lower leaves stripped off, and a bit root bound in their tiny starter plugs. I was instructed to bury them just like tomatoes, and having done that, they look just like normal pepper seedlings.

I suppose that this thread has run its course, unless more disease pokes out its ugly head. I will post pictures in my garden progress thread.

imafan26
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Thanks for the update. The plants did not look like they had a typical disease problem. It really does look more like pest rather than bacterial or fungal problem. I would like to know more about the new disease if you have any more information.

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MichaelC
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I'm sorry, imafan, I wasn't able to get any more info than that. The guy had lots of customers and was pretty busy. Some updated photos are in my garden progress thread.

*edit* I wasn't sure if an Image



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