I have a ton of fire ants in my garden and I recently noticed these things on my jalapeño plant and that the ants are all over my jalapeño plant too. Anyone know what they are or what to do about them and the ants? ( photo / image / picture from poodledoodlemom's Garden )
Actually, Neem will not get rid of them immediately. Neem interferes with their reproduction, so you will still see them hanging out on the peppers, but in time less and less of them because they can't reproduce, but are still sucking the life out of your plants. The ants will "milk" them for the sweet secretions they make which is called "honeydew". The ants will attack you to protect their "farm". So, the first thing to start with is a strong spray of water from the garden hose. then go to soapy water and if that still isn't as effective as you would like, use and insecticide of your choice labeled for peppers for immediate knockdown, but the neem won't hurt in any way to use it. Just don't mix it with a detergent to save time in trying to get rid of the aphids. You can mix neem with insecticidal soap, though. But it must be insecticidal soap, which you can buy in most garden departments. I mixed it (neem) with a teeny bit of detergent this Spring (I just didn't empty the sprayer when I used it for spraying and there was just a teeny bit of non sudsy water in there) and it ruined the tomatoes I sprayed with the neem oil/mix and don't spray in the heat of the day. Aim for evening hours, but with enough time that the leaf can dry before dark.
Crap! I found a recipe for water, oil, 4 drops of dish soap (I used blue Dawn), and a dash of cayenne pepper. I hope I didn't kill all my plants now!!!!!!
As long as you didn't mix it with the neem oil you won't hurt the plants. The neem and the dawn together are a bad combination.
The joys of gardening! Lol! I might have gotten Neem oil on it when I sprayed other plants with it. On a good note....I've gotten 6 cherry tomatoes so far.
Wonder why Neem and dishsoap combo isn't good? And is it just disastrous for tomatoes or veggies? What about on flowers? I'm just curious because those are the two main things I keep on hand for fighting insects on the flowers. I may have even mixed them before... don't recall any damage.
The mixture can cause phytotoxicity. The leaves of the two tomato varieties I sprayed mutated into balls of foliage. I threw most of those plants out since I wasnt comfortable selling them and I planted a couple just to see what they would do. The ones I planted out eventually developed those "leaf-balls" into leather-like leaves. They grew, but haven't really produced fruit and are still growing the "new" leaves out as leaf-balls before developing into leaves.
