Then this morning I mixed up several five-gallon bucket's worth batches of hot pepper spray to treat the garden plants, which are already getting devastated by cucumber beetles and japanese beetles both. The Pumpkins and Green Beans in particular are starting to look sick. My sprayer bottle conked out and wouldn't spray anymore so I just threw the pepper water over the plants until they were dripping. Mixed three kinds of hot sauce and a dash of dish soap into the water, is all. It was strong enough that the scent of it off the plants when I was done made me cough! I treated the pumpkins, green bean poles, chard (still not sure what's eating that), cherry tomatoes and the sole cantaloupe plant. Nothing's eaten the cantaloupe leaves yet but if the bugs get driven off the bean poles I don't want them to start attacking my cantaloupes.
I've also been simply drowning the offending bugs, but simply can't keep up with them.
4 comments:
I hate pests :( I've done the hot pepper spray in the past too..was just bad at keeping up with it after it got washed off by the rain!
after all that work I did to douse the plants in pepper it rained the same night. Now I'll have to do it all over again!
What kind of pepper do you use and in what proportion?
Do you have any earwigs where you live? I've caught slugs, little green worms and earwigs destroying the leaves of my beans, brussels sprouts and sunflowers. I've tried a dishsoap and water mix, but that seems to only work if I blast them directly.
I didn't use exact proportions but just poured whatever hot sauce we had into a 5-gallon bucket, probably it was about a cup total of tobasco and frank's red hot. We do have earwigs and I've caught them crawling all over the swiss chard before but I didn't realize they might have been causing damage. I never got around to re-applying the pepper mix; it got washed off in the next rain.
I actually just cut down my green beans and found not more japanese or cucumber beetles- the pests i'd been watching out for- but lots of stink bugs. Now I wonder if they were my main culprits!
Dealing with pests is a constant struggle for me.
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