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!