Unidentified yellow insects on cucumber...[SOLVED]

I know what many insects are and I like to think I'd be able to spot any normal pests in the UK.
However I've seen these things quite a bit in the greenhouse every year - they don't seem to do any obvious damage but can be quite numerous.

I know you're thinking "APHID!" but it's not. It's a fast moving yellow dot, around 1mm, they don't get any bigger and they don't stay still long enough to suck sap. They remind me a bit of mites but I only see six legs and not a mitey shape.

To the naked eye they're just a yellow dot.

I'm guessing from the constant movement that they might be predatory?

Update: We have a positive ID - they are Globular Springtails. Who knew. There's not much about them but they're not a pest directly so I'll leave them be.

Slugs and sharp gravel - does it work as a deterrent?

No.

Maybe.

But no.

Can you spot the slug?

Slugs seem to be able to cross anything - I've even seen them walking up the netting pictured. Gravel doesn't seem impassable to them, although they may not like it. 

As one of a series of measures it may help - but does it act like a barrier that slugs are unable to cross? Categorically no. 

Next experiment will be copper tape. After that - sticky back velcro. 

Dealing with slugs organically without slug pellets - not an easy task

Slugs. Nothing quite destroys plants like slugs can. They are so indiscriminately destructive to plants and advance like an army out of nowhere, it's easy to reach for the big guns and pellet the garden.

However, while I do drop the odd pellet strategically on non-edible areas, I do it only sparsely and I'm not sure it even works. The real battle for me is not fought with pellets. It's fought with scissors.

Now let me make one thing clear - it's a disgusting job. And not one done for personal enjoyment, nor is it for everyone, but the thing about slugs is, they've got to be killed somehow. You can't relocate them, you can't donate them to the local shelter, and you can't leave them be - unless you don't want any vegetables. It comes down to a grim choice of, well, how exactly do you want to kill them.

I don't find salt humane in any way - I've watched slugs in salt and it doesn't look pleasant. Drowning doesn't seem so great either, they spend a lot of time trying to escape and honestly, they often manage to, which defeats the purpose somewhat. Beer traps even less so - slugs can climb up almost anything, I tried the beer trap and one slug fell in which could have been considered a success but for the fact I went out one night and saw quite some number using it as a free bar. If you aren't looking at your beer traps at midnight then you aren't seeing how well they're "working"!

Out of all the options, for me, snipping them in two seems the least offensive way of dispatching of them, although it does initially seem quite disgusting. This way also they can stay in the food chain - they're not poisoned or salty and they're available to eat by any birds or animals that wish to.

So - I tend to arm myself with three things - some tongs to remove the slugs from plants so they don't make a disgusting mess, a torch, and scissors or shears if you don't want to get up close.

Initially I did feel quite disgusted with myself for the indiscriminate massacre of what must have been hundreds of slugs in a single night, but, you get used to it. Or perhaps just hardened to it. At the end of the day it's a matter of veg or no veg, they would happily destroy your entire crop - in fact it's not even a would, they will and do. So - as a gardener we have to sometimes do gross things and we have to kill a lot of creatures one way or another.

The important thing for me is that I do it manually and don't resort to pellets or worse. I don't believe in killing anything that doesn't need to be killed, and I don't believe in chemical solutions unless they're the only option.

Have I won though? No. Not yet. The battle against slugs is a combination of hiding things from them (raising plants up, creating barriers, etc) and removing them. Attracting frogs with a pond hasn't worked out so well - I have the pond but no frogs yet.

I'm still thinking about nematodes but I don't know, I might try, I might not. I don't really like the idea, although I can't justify why. I'm most certainly not averse to biological controls - in fact I use them regularly with amblyseieus which I have written about. We'll see I guess.

I guess later I'll talk about how many aphids I've squished. It's not really aphid season yet though.

A day of potting up

 Today being one of those days where it's sunny enough to get stuff done, and a Sunday. Most of the day was spent potting up. Namely cucumbers, tomatoes, chillies (a couple of last year's overwintered chillies are now in enormous pots!), I think that's about it for potting up.

In other news...First up! A very cheeky bird I'm told is a Jay, no less than 2 feet away, I've not seen these before in the garden although I'm also told they're common. Normally we just get those annoying pigeons...

Broad beans, I'm being ultra lazy with them this year, I'm just growing them through a shelf from greenhouse staging. Will it provide enough support? Probably! 

Coriander has sprouted in the greenhouse, I was worried it might not due to low temperatures, but it looks just fine! 

Random fish photo. They have grown over winter. 

Now, carrot problem. I always have these problems with seeds but these were plants I bought as seedlings. There's too many of them too close together. Separating them made all manner of ripping sounds, we'll have to see how it goes. 

 I replanted the separated surplus ones in this bed below...just to left of centre if you can see - they don't look happy at all. I guess we'll have to see. I'm not that bothered. I've never had much success with carrots. 

The peas in this bed are doing well though, looking messy but I think they'll work out OK. They're mostly of the sugar snap / mange tout type so we should be seeing harvests soon! 

This year is definitely the year of the pea. This bed was actually acquired from IKEA and it's a bit shallow for me, but it seems to be working fine for peas and beans so far. I don't think it has particularly good drainage though, it has a solid base. 

Final note for today: Garden centres amuse me. The larger a plant grows, the lower the price. I suppose space is a premium but this was a win for me. I'm somewhat apathetic about where or how I get plants with regard to growing vs buying plants. I always grow tomatoes and cucumbers from seed myself, but if I see some I like, especially grafted ones, I will pick them up. Grafted plants are definitely for another episode though. Because that's a whole different can o' worms..

Changes afoot...

Last time I wrote in this blog was a good while ago, and the reason I stopped is because I had less to say about chillies and more to say about vegetable gardening in general.
So after a long time mulling it over, the decision has been made. The blog has been refocused. I'm now writing a veg gardening blog. Which includes chillies, naturally.

Much has progressed in the garden. I now have two greenhouses although one was nearly destroyed in winds this year, it's really a glorified tent but it does the job, or has done for two seasons anyway. I also have raised beds outdoors - yes - finally I've embraced the idea of growing plants outside. More on that later.

A few things to document today though - a grey and very wet day, but a chance to go through a couple of this years' promising plants..

If you can't figure out what these are - you are not alone. Kohl Rabi! They look (or should look) like some crazy evolution of pokemon Still waiting for that, the stem needs to swell. They're sort of radishy things.

The grafted "mini stars" cucumbers from suttons seeds always comes out first in the cucumber world. I always pick a couple up because the yield is amazing. 

Carrots. Never grown before. Well, not successfully anyway. 

That's enough for now anyway. Peas and beans later, and tomatoes I suppose. And an interesting tale about overwintering chillies!

More Biological Control - Thrip Predators! (Amblyseius cucumeris) On Chilli Plants

Since the thrips are back, and the "thripinator" apparently doesn't work on them at all, I am bored of their damage to plants, and I'm bored of seeing them on my fruits - albeit they havent actually damaged any fruits yet.

Say Hi to Steve. Yes, I named him before squashing him.

Apparently - thrip levels have to get above "40 per plant" to be seriously destructive, below that they're just annoying. 

So, other than the aluminium mulch, and picking them off by hand (sellotape works REALLY well by the way!), I thought I'd try something different. Meet the mites!

These are predatory mites Amblyseius cucumeris. I first encountered these with broad mites, though I didnt use them in the end.

The sachets, acquired from Just Green in the UK, contain a feed and eggs, so the mites hatch at a fairly regulated level, apparently around 400 per week, for 6 weeks. They recommend one sachet per plant, though the manufacturer implies a level of one per 3 plants should be enough.

I have to say, this all looks very promising - but we'll see!

Biological pest control can be fun and cheap - fungus gnats controlled with carnivorous plants!

People seem to really hate fungus gnats - those little flies that hang around the soil on your plants and fly up when you water or touch the pots. They are an annoyance and they do apparently eat the roots of plants, but I've never had much of a problem with them. Because for me, they're FOOD.

No, no, I don't eat them. Probably taste like wafer though, most small flies do. Don't ask me how I know this. Back to the point - carnivorous plants..

For Fungus Gnats

Best things at eating these critters is butterwort (pinguicula) or sundew (drosera). The easiest ones to not kill are mexican butterwort and cape sundew. They need a lot of light and heat - what a coincidence - so do chillies.

Cape Sundew - waiting for flies! 

The great advantage with these plants is they are literally nature's fly-paper. They also digest the flies so you don't have to do much maintenance. They grow new leaves so you dont have to buy more, and they are very low maintenance. All they need is the soil to be kept damp (yes very damp, way damper than chillies, they're a bog plant!) and sun - lots of sun.

Cape Sundew (or at least I think it is..!)

The pinguicula is even better - it's a total gnat magnet, and it divides and conquers!

I divided my pinguicula up - I bought it a year ago for £3ish, largely ignored it, then yesterday noticed there were MANY rosettes - you can split them out. I ended up with no less than TWELVE individual potted plants. That's a lot. From one plant.

12 Pinguiculas!

How quickly do they catch flies? Well, after division, I hosed the plants down so all the flies came off. Next day I put one of the new plants into the greenhouse and within just one minute...

OM NOM NOM...!

Soil requirements - this is important - ALL carnivorous plants (to my knowledge) are used to having poor soil, when I say poor I mean it's specifically bad. I buy carnivorous plant soil so I dont have to worry about mixing it. Seriously - if you get even SOME fertiliser in the mix, the plants rot away. Apparently. 

So instead of using various chemicals to solve your fungus gnat problem - give nature a go. You may be very surprised to see how effective it is. 

For houseflies, wasps, etc...

These are bigger insects and need bigger traps - you probably know about the venus fly trap, well it will work here but they are a pain to keep and notoriously die within a year. Easier to keep are plants like the pitcher plant or sarracenia.

The flies slip in and can't climb out - it's that simple!

May Update - First Chilli Eaten!

Been very busy with chilli plants, repotting like mad. With the warmer weather of end April / Beginning May, the plants really took off, especially those with the prime real estate in the south facing bay window.

I'm repotting into "final" pots, 15cm (6 inch). I think for some plants this won't be final, but for a lot of them, example super chilli, apache, this will be the final pots. We'll see. Certainly final for now.

First Chilli

So, I thought super chilli or last year's scotch bonnet might be the first chilli that I ate, but no. An apache plant grown from seed on the 15th December took the honours. Unfortunately I wasn't smart enough to take a photo of it, but here's it chopped up ready to eat.

Hot? You bet.

More chillies are on their way from Super Chilli, and Apache plants. And the overwintered scotch bonnet finally got round to the idea of not throwing away its flowers and actually has some fruits coming!

Plenty of tiny scotch bonnets coming along there! I've had a lot of trouble coaxing this plant into action. The soil is constantly wet and I can't get the transpiration rates up, I've even tried replacing the compost. That's why the leaves look a bit yellowy, it's not enjoying the damp. I've put a fan on it the last few days in the hopes it might help, it gets full sun so I'm not really sure I understand what's going on, but, I guess sometimes you get that kind of thing.

The rest

Apache doing well - this one gave the first fruit

Super chilli "F2"

Bhut Jolokia doing well!

Rather a lot of foliage on this windowsill now!

Keeping the balance - AKA an ode to avoiding pesticides when growing vegetables

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.

What do ladybirds eat?

Well - Cheerios. Obviously!

  

I'm trying to encourage them to stick around, and giving them cheerios might just work!

New insects! [Booklice]

Found this under a plant pot, no idea what it is..beneficial or nasty? 

 

Edit: found out they are "booklice" or related, harmless insects that normally eat bark or similar. Nice to have found an insect that won't eat my chillies, for a change!

The Thrip-inator (or, how to adapt a vacuum cleaner hose to pick up bugs on chilli peppers)

Thrips are fast! I've been picking them off by hand for the last 3 days or so. So, I thought, well, you tap the leaves, they fall off, so they're not clinging on that well - right??

Enter the THRIPINATOR.

Basic idea

Adapt a vacuum cleaner to be able to suck thrips off a leaf with a reasonable efficacy and without [significant] damage to the plants and/or buds and/or flowers.

Development

Important features are:
Lower suction - we want to remove the bugs, not the leaves or the soil!
Catch the bugs - A nice way to see what we've caught afterwards

 An initial diagram evolved to cover those two bases.

Initial Tests

First, I need to see how much suction is too much suction.
My vacuum cleaner is awesome. It has a dial that you can use to reduce the speed of the motor and hence the suction power, this is intended for curtains more than thrips, but, we make do...
Fashioning a head seemed easier with a soap bottle than with a coke bottle, with the added bonus that during tests, some soap might get onto the plants and kill a thrip or two - you can hope!

Here it is - the thrip-inator v0.1

And here's a vid of it in action:

Will it work? Not sure. I couldn't find a single thrip during this morning's rounds...

Thrips - Aluminium (Aluminum) foil mulch time

Ah, yes. The joy of thrips.

I found a handful of these on my chillies so far.

Thrips are tiny insects that you probably already know about, but you don't know that they're destructive to your chillies. Ever had one of those little wormy flies land on your arm while out in the heat of summer? Those are thrips.

Unfortunately they often come with the soil, as seems to have happened to me, so there's really not a lot you can do to prevent them. The best advice is to be vigilant, and stop a sporadic thrip becoming an outbreak. Thrip watch!

Always check under leaves with a loupe / magnifying glass - that's where most bugs hide, thrips, broad mites, aphids, and so on, and so on. Daily spot checks of leaf undersides is a must, even if you think you are bug free!

Aluminium Mulch

This simply means putting a collar of aluminium over the plant's stem base from the stem right to the edge of the pot. Don't worry, it's not for the oven, it's simply a potential thrip disruption tactic.
This is how it's SUPPOSED to work: Thrips go into the soil to lay eggs. They know where the soil is because it's dark and soily. By putting aluminium there, it makes the soil look a lot more like the sky, and the thrips have no idea where the soil is. Kind of like a hall of mirrors for a thrip.

Other Measures

Like most pest control methods, I imagine it won't work alone - which is where other measures come in. Namely

1) I have a couple of willing volunteers. I have no idea where they came from, but they're VERY welcome

2) Quarantine of known infested plants and daily inspections/squishing - thankfully thrips on plants are big enough to see and also just about big enough to squish.

 Currently only one plant has a confirmed thrip problem and I'm picking off around two daily at this time. So, it's not panic stations yet. Let's hope we can keep it that way!

Massive update, greenhouses and propagators, seeds and flowers!

I've been very busy lately, with repotting, planting, transplanting, building a greenhouse, and so on.

Greenhouse

First things first, the Greenhouse was finished a while ago,

 

Although I haven't been able to use it yet as I've been recording temperatures as low as minus 1 celsius. Which...well....is too cold by a fair way. 

Good weather is forecast though! Happy times! 

Growing Update 

Seedlings have become young plants already:

Well ahead of normal growing, the bigger plants are mainly Super Chilli with some Apache and Cherry bomb mixed in, and they were sown in mid December so I'm happy about that.

As in my other post, the overwintered and totally lopped scotch bonnet is also doing well, flowers by the tonne already.

More Seeds!

So - well, given that I blew all my seeds in Dec/Jan really and now have none left to sow in March when you're actually supposed to sow them, I thought I'd get more.

We have Naga Morich

and also this awesome list of seeds:

Peter Pepper in Red Yellow and Orange (separate packets!)
Aji Lemon
Birdseye  (the Thai one)
Thai Dragon
Hot Lemon (this one is lemon flavoured!)
More Monkey Face
Fatalii yellow.

They're all already in the propagator!

More Propagators!

So, I bought another small electric propagator. Then, I went into Aldi (a German discount supermarket emporium here in the UK) and they'd reduced their electric propagators to £5, so I had to buy the remaining 2. I mean, some places charge £5 for a lid!

So my total electric propagator army is now 5 strong. Excessive? Well, maybe not, because they're all currently FULL!

Propagators at full capacity! And yes, that is a Duran Duran vinyl. So what?

Other news

I've had a lot of buds on the new plants, they're too small really to be having flowers, I think. I'm considering what to do. I've already pinched some buds off, but from what I recall of last year, the early buds do tend to grow into full chillies, so I might leave some. Still thinking about that.

I've also somehow begun growing tomatoes. Well, they're just fat round chillies with no heat aren't they? I'll try to keep this blog "tomato free" but they might creep in now and then ;o)

First flower of the year!

From the overwintered Scotch Bonnet!

Greenhouse!

Having already overflowed the bay window I grow my chillies in, I guess I should build the greenhouse I got in the January sales. It's been sat in the hall waiting for me to get round to it.

To be fair, nobody wants to start digging soil to put slabs down in the ice/snow/wind of January do they?

Here's the base. Literally just dug over the soil and flattened it, and eased the slabs into a vaguely flat pattern.

It's a tiny greenhouse really. If I'd realised how small, I might have gone for a size bigger. The main problem I will have is the roof is too low - but, I guess we'll see.

The greenhouse, for the record, was this one from homebase. It cost me £151.99. :)

I'm aware that it has bad reviews too. But, seriously, £151.99....for a greenhouse.....

Grow Update - 8 Feb 2014

I'm afraid there's not much to say, everything is growing pretty slowly at this time of year and obviously no signs of fruits or flowers, so the updates are slow too.

2nd batch of seeds are germinating nicely though:

Nice quick germination even on the bhut jolokia this time. The only one that I'm waiting for is Tabasco, which is turning out to be quite a stubborn one! Perhaps a dodgy batch of seeds...

All the pre-xmas plants are nice and green which is a relief. Today's quite sunny too, so I'm sure they're appreciating it!

As a side note, that arrangement pictured above, of 7 pots to one big pot tray, works really well!

Peter Pepper Seeds!

For those of you who haven't heard of Peter Pepper, then you need to go google it now.

It's singly the most rude plant known to mankind. I mean, seriously.

So, when I had the chance to get some seeds? Of course I did!

Good news too - they have germinated. How did I germinate them? Nothing special, just the heated propagator. Took exactly 7 days, which is surprisingly short too. Must be nice and toasty in that propagator!