It's no secret that I lurk on various forums reading up on how to grow chillies, pests, disease and so on.
Something that's been "bugging" (pun intended) me for a while now, is what in my opinion is the hobbyists over-reliance on broad spectrum chemical insecticides, and for that matter, organicides.
Let me go into some more detail here.
I see this scenario play out over and over again:
1) A forum member spots a handful of bugs chewing their plant(s). Posts photos online to ask for ID and prognosis, treatment, etc.
2) "Experienced" forum members all climb over themselves to help. This is good btw, I like how helpful forum members can be in chilli forums!
3) Advice ranges from "I use AVID" to "peroxide" to "SMOKE BOMB" to "pyrethrin every week for a month" to worse suggestions involving chemicals I wouldn't put on my own vegetables. And so on.
4) Forum member who asks has no way to balance these opinions so often will take the nastiest looking chemical or worse, multiple chemical solutions, and goes at all their plants.
5) Forum member reports "success". Mutual back patting ensues.
6) Forum member then posts another major outbreak of either a secondary pest or a larger outbreak of the same pest. This time, it's much worse.
Now, why does this happen? Well. The universe is in a fine balance, and that does extend as far as your garden too. When you went at it with what they call "broad spectrum insecticides", you killed "most" of the pests. You also killed "most" of the other organisms hanging round the plant and if you watered it into the soil, there too.
Now this does apply more to gardens than indoor plants, but both to an extent. If you disturb the balance with a "KILL THEM! KILL THEM ALL!" mentality, then did you really expect your post-apocalyptic scenario to pan out well? Guess who will come back first, the beneficial insects that eat the pests, or the pests themselves? :)
So - I suppose you want me to give you an alternative? Well, OK. Try using pesticides as a LAST resort, and using them much more strategically. Try thinking through a progressive strategy starting with a fairly passive response if you haven't got a major infestation.
And more importantly - a change of mindset is necessary. You should never expect to keep a pest free crop. It's a fool's errand. Think of it more as pest control than pest eradication.
This doesn't apply to all pests, for example aphids are a pain, whereas a handful of broad mites can and will destroy your entire crop overnight. So, with some pests, you can't mess around and you have to take the big guns out. But the majority of pests just don't need this scale of action. You can live with them. You can buy predators, you can attract predators, you can make the conditions unfavourable. You can keep the balance.
Just think about it, before drenching in spinosad or neem.
