Earlier this year, we introduced you to Dirtman at Power 104 in Kelowna.
Dirt is a dedicated pepper grower and because his story was told on air, listeners kept sending in tips and suggestions. This was such a good story, we had to share it with you.....

The courtyard at Power 104 yields great crops of peppers. It is like a mini kiln with loads of sunshine and a tap for watering and misting healthy doses of rock music makes the plants happy and bountiful ...
every year except this year.

The Saga continues. I come back from a couple days on the coast to find a bottle of green solution beside plants in courtyard. Frank, our local garden expert had said he'd drop off an Aphid-ridding solution. So I used it for three days spraying under and over the leaves. I thanked Frank for his Aphid-Be-Gone concoction but said the plants are withering and the Aphids are still partying far too hard .He said he didn't drop off anything. Turns out our engineer was cleaning a plastic sign with industrial strength cleaner and accidently left it beside the plants.
This also explains why the first jalapeno we harvested tasted like plastic.

When the aphids first leached onto the underside and pepper buds I invested in a bag of ladybugs. It was actually a 2 for one sale, so I bought 500 and got 500 free. This would be the eco-friendly way to rid my infestation.Each lady bug would eat 7 aphids a day I was told. That's 7,000 a day. I put them out at night as per instructions and expected the feast to begin immediatly. I had hope in my lady killers.

The next morning I discovered the entire flock of ladybugs had flown off. And they obviously left on empty stomachs. My next purchase was a 10 dollar bottle of stuff I'll simply say was not the 'Be-All' it promised on the label. Somewhere under a microscope the aphids were enjoying the soapy solution, laying back, scrubbing themselves and chewing away on the peppers.

Several days of rain and cold came to the courtyard in late June. This would finish off the little buggers. But alas somewhere in Western Canada was getting far more rain and wind and just like tourists, aphids came from across the west to be with their Kelowna friends ...ON MY PLANTS.

Even the light detergent was useless. It was more like an aphidisiac with one aphid on top of another in a Hot Thai and Habanero love-fest.

Today the wasps arrived. I'm quite happy. They are glomming onto the leaves. They are even building a nest in the courtyard. Some fly through the open door and that makes for nervous staff. When I spray, they swarm and somewhere through that swarm are my pepper plants and I don't care to venture much closer to see if the aphids are still around.