Chili Plants Pests

Healthy and vigorous growth of chilli plants is essentially inhibited in two ways. On the one hand, there are unfavourable environmental influences such as wetness, wind, poor soil, low temperatures and lack of light. You can easily have a positive effect on these. However, a bad one is an unexpected pest infestation. This can quickly spread in your chilli breeding. Find out here how you can arm yourself against such a disaster, or naturally fight insects that are harmful to chillies.

First things first: sight and contain the enemy as early as possible. A frequent control of the plants is therefore one of the most important defensive measures against pests and diseases. Pay attention to fine spinning threads, sticky and unnatural discolourations on leaves. Also examine the undersides of the leaves. Many pests hide there. A magnifying glass will help you to recognize and identify troublemakers. Know your enemies.

Especially if you want to avoid a chemical club, you should follow some tips from wise gardeners with green thumbs. In the garden a pest infestation regulates itself automatically. The predators of the pests follow the foot or feeler. Ladybirds, for example, are perfect for containing a lice farm.

You can easily keep ladybirds in the garden by offering winter quarters in the form of leaves and heaps of brushwood. Hedgehogs who can help you to combat snails also like to spend the winter in such a heap of leaves. For green lacewings, also avid helpers against aphids, set up green lacewing houses. Insect houses like to nest in the chambers filled with straw. You can find predatory nematodes in mail-order shops. These usually decimate your enemies and their victims in no time at all.

Sometimes it helps with well visible pests like lice to spray them with the garden hose. You can pick up snails yourself or - if you like - encourage neighboring children to do so.

Make sure you have a crop rotation in the garden. This will avoid infestation by nematodes in the soil. In practice, chili plants are planted each year in a different bed. Of course, the new location should have just as good soil and get as much sun as the piece of garden from last year.

Chillies sometimes thrive better in the vicinity of other plants than without plant friends. Herbs with a high content of essential oils drive away unpleasant insects. Chillies, on the other hand, are also useful for other vegetables. In one article we have already dealt with good and bad neighbors of chili plants.

If indoor plants are infested, you should take countermeasures as soon as possible. Natural regulation by beneficial insects is less common in the home.

Remove infested plant parts both outside and inside. It is better to sacrifice a branch or a chilli pepper than to risk further spreading. In the worst case you also have to part with a whole chili plant.

In the selection process, little attention is paid to resistant and tolerant varieties. In the case of chillies, the degree of spiciness and the aroma are rightly in the first place. But maybe you also take one or the other hybrid with you. These are specifically crossed to create more yield or a more robust F1 plant.

In the home and balcony, it is best to use sterilized soil that has been thermally treated. Diseases and pests are rendered harmless by heating.
Good fungi and soil bacteria usually displace their bad conspecifics. Fertilizers containing soil-improving bacteria and mycorrhizal fungi can strengthen chillies and displace unpleasant guests.

If an infestation should occur despite all caution, you do not need to swing the chemical club immediately. Few pests are usually no problem for healthy plants. So you don’t have to worry about your future chilli peppers unnecessarily. A little tolerance for a few lice will not hurt. In the open, this regulates itself in a natural way.

However, if your plants look sickly, your own immune system is not in good shape. First try to stop the reason for bad growth. Natural pesticides regulate gently. From our experience, neem oil and neem powder are included, which we like to use in the cultivation of chillies.

Chemistry is unavoidable for some problems, such as fungus and virus infestation. Then be sure to pay meticulous attention to their leaflets. You can obtain advice from specialist retailers and garden centers.

A devilish vermin, which is beating mercilessly at Chilis on the windowsill. The cause for the rapid spread is mostly dry heating air. Spray your chillies regularly with water and pay attention to fine spinning fibres. This pest pattern is clearly visible due to the adhering water mist. If there are any, you have to act. We like to use neem oil for control and prevention. Neem oil is a biological plant remedy from the fruits of the Neem or Niem tree.

Aphids suck the plant juices from the chilli plant. They are usually recognizable with naked eyes or by a sticky layer. Damage to the chillies are crippled leaves and buds. The sucking pests become particularly dangerous if they transmit plant diseases and viruses.

In the garden, the problem is often negligible. Distilling donkey manure as a plant fortifier helps quite well. Stable chilli plants can be sprayed with the garden hose or in the bathtub. Neem oil or various pest-free agents can help with young plants and heavy infestation. You can buy these at a DIY store, for example. Savoury and lavender are suitable neighbouring plants to drive out aphids.

Funeral mosquitoes are small black flies, which are usually introduced by potting soil or coconut soil of inferior quality. A fast development is favored by constantly moist soil. Allow the top layer to dry before watering again. Two tips that are often heard: to stick a match head in the ground. On the other hand: it often helps more to cover the top layer with sand. In small quantities you can get quartz sand in the aquarium department of the zoo supplies.

Yellow stickers are a really recommendable and effective solution against flying plant pests.

Put them out as soon as possible when you discover the first fungus mosquitoes. These also reproduce rapidly in an unpleasant way.

The pattern of damage in white flies is similar to that of aphids. Honeydew, a sticky layer, can be seen on the leaves. The flying insects grow to about 3 mm in size and quickly attract attention. Yellow stickers help here.

Rapeseed oil is a popular and gentle household remedy against all kinds of insects. Ready mixed you get it as a plant remedy. You can produce it yourself simply by adding 4 teaspoons of rapeseed oil to one liter of water. Shake this mixture properly and spray with a flower spray bottle on infested plants. Don’t forget the underside of the leaves!

We treat the leaves with neem oil every autumn. About a week before the plants are brought into the house to spend the winter. Nature regulates itself in the garden and on the balcony. In the house many pests spread explosively. You can often avoid the trouble with the unloved fellow travelers by a previous treatment.