Does worm tea repel aphids?

I have seen mentioned in other articles about worm tea repelling aphids. is this a fact?

chucki, I hope you get some responses to this question here in the vermiculture forum because I would like to hear more on this subject. If not, I would recommend going to docgripe and see what he has to offer. doc's had some recent comments in another forum which are worth checking out. I have plans for making compost tea for the first time using doc's recommendations, and have incouraged several others to bring this discussion to the vermiculture section. Good Luck Chucki!

morgan

Thanks mraider3, I am not familiar with "docgripe" how do I go there?

Docgripe is one of the DG members-I think you can put his name in the DG search box
Julia

Sorry Chuck, dropped the ball here, but Julia is correct. doc doesn't post much but he is fairly active in several forums such as Soil & Composting Discussion Forum. Check out carminator's question about compost tea on Jan. 21, 2010. This might be more helpful than the vermiculture forum. I have heard similar comments about compost tea but nothing specific about aphids. Aphids are a real pest for my pepper seedlings, but once placed outdoors the problem dissapears. I have plans to start over a hundred pepper seedlings early in the garden between bales of straw and covered with old window panes. My biggest concern with this method is pepper plant aphid infestation while plants are still covered in this hot house fashion. I have had no experience with compost tea and this year will be my first. If I find out anything on aphid control with this method I will certainly post the information. Let us know if you discover anything in another forum Chuck. It would be nice to keep this subject active here as well.

I have been using worm castings and tea for the past two years in my home garden as I take care of several worm bins at a local nature center. We try to show visitors vermicomposting along with bin composting. I know that it is not a proven science what it will or will not repel. The only suggestion is that worm castings/worm tea improve the health of the plants helping them repel infestations and disease. I use it on my citrus, roses and apple/fruit trees and am completely convinced it is very good at keeping them healthy. I also used to always have rust on my holly hocks and with one good application of castings they completely stopped having rust! Honest. Dealing with aphids in a hot house is not something I know about. The aphids I get are dealt with either by hose or hand by me. The nature center uses the castings to dress the potted plants and every one working there feels confident that the castings are improving the plants growth. Again, it is encouraging the health of the plants.

Fannyrose, you mentioned the hosing procedure for dispersing aphids. I have taken some 10" indoor pepper seedlings infested with aphids outdoors and gently sprayed them to removed the aphids. It doesn't completely get rid of them but it certainly knocks them down for a while. I have been reading elsewhere that a morning application of worm compost tea on the leaves of aphid infested plants is helpful. The combination of both methods may be the ticket for the pepper plants in the 'strawbale/hotbed'. I haven't determined the best method of applying the worm compost tea, but I am leaning towards one of the larger sprayers with shoulder straps which could accomplish both tasks in one application.

Your comments of showing visitors at your nature center how to vermicompost would make a nice thread here in the vermicomposting forum. Your teaching techniques could lead to some interesting discussions...please consider.

morgan

Hello all,
We have been on vacation to Wikikii for the past 2 weeks so now to catch up.
All the infor I have found concerning worm tea is that it does repel aphids.Spray it on the plant and put casting around the roots.
I have tried before to grow peppers in my greenhouse (season isn't long enough outside) and the aphids won every time. I even invested $24 in ladybugs attempting to rid the plants of aphids. Cost effective? NOT!!!
I just don't like giving up.
Thanks for the input.
Chuck

I also read that coffee grounds stop aphids and chewing insects. My hollyhocks were attached by something but I have no idea what. Could never see anything but they took down each leaf except the veins. I should have taken a photo. So this spring, which like it might be tomorrow, I am going to use both tea and coffee grounds.

Sharon, are we talking a surface appliction of coffee grounds, or working them just into the surface area, or thoroughly mixing them into the potting or germination mixes?

I'm toying with a couple of other aphid eliminating ideas as well. One diea includes a surface application of diatomaceous earth/carbon residual from aqarium cleanings. Someone here in DG mentioned that diatomaceous earth acts as a sort of cutting agent, which when surface applied will cut the little varmets up as they try to emerge or navigate the surface. Some seed catalogs sell diatomaceous earth in the 'pure' form, but I purchase mine online from a tropical fish product supplier. It can also be purchased reasonably in large bags if you are thinking garden sized applications. I have purchased it this way in the past for other usages from chemical supply companies, and may so again. However, I want to see how my liter of saved diatomaceous earth/carbon residual works on pepper plant seedlings which have always been an aphid magnet.

I just spread the coffee ground like fertilizer and then spray with water. The worms come up and take it down with them. My front landscape always smells like Starbucks. I have used diatomaceous earth on snails and slugs. I tried it on my lettuce last spring because something was having a feast on it. Did not stop them. I went out a few nights later to pick some lettuce and they were covered with these green little worms. I picked them off with my fingers for about 3 nights and then they were gone. Aphids do not bother my peppers but I keep an eye out for the tomato worms because they will take a pepper plant down in one day.

Well it is now June 13 and I have been washing, wiping, and picking aphids off my pepper plants for days now. I have applied worm casting tea sence the plants emerged and now have gone to soap/garlic/water spray.

The year of the Aphid here in Las Vegas. I only used water and fingers. They even attached the street scape and greenbelt Ash Trees. I hosed mine down because they told me we had been invaded by aphids. My neighbor did not and my trees turned green and his is still yellow. They are telling us the heat will get them and I agree, because they appear to be gone. They probably left because of the weird weather. 110 degrees high, 10 days later 75 degrees high and then four days later 100 degrees. Do you blame them for being confused? Have a great day.

Thought I would take a couple of minutes and check out some threads...your's was first on my selection Chucki. Was surprised to see your pickup on an old thread here. Speaking of weather my Farmer's Alminac reported a cool, wet summer for this year. How do they do that??? It has been raining two days straight now and it's about mid-forties at night. Still haven't planted peppers or tomatoes. Had a major screwup with new hoop-house and had to start over on these two groups of plants. Put everything else behind schedule as well, but with the coolest, wettest spring I can remember, it really doesn't matter. I just hope there is enough time for crops to develop this year.

As for aphids on my pepper plants, I have not seen a single one. Twiggybuds recommended using hydrogen peroxide in the water used to start my seedlings. This may have been the difference. I also added some in the initial seedling waterings which may also have been of some benefit in reducing or removing these nasty little varmits. As Sharon mentioned hosing them off of plants works if the plants are sturdy enough. I do that with rhubarb. I haven't had a problem with aphids once the pepper plants are transplanted to garden, so I can't say if the compost tea works as aphid repellant.

I have a new problem which is potato beetles this year. I picked about a hundred beetles off my first four rows in a weeks time. They have laid clusters of up to twenty or more eggs on the lower leaf of most plants on the south side of the plants. Curious! Whenever I spot a beetle or breeding beetles, usually on top of a plants, I inspect the lowest leaves of that plant as well as adjacent plants, smashing the little yellow eggs with my fingers. A neighbor four doors down lost his entire potato crop last year to potato beetles and I'm determined not to let that happen here. I haven't made any compost tea as yet, but I have about 100 gallons of stored rain water to use for that purpose. I intend to use it on the potato plants for any beetle eggs missed. Hope that helps.

I just finished filling a deep dug raised bed with some well aged cow manure and straw, in which I entend to add some of my euro worms. I have been keeping my initial supply of european nightcrawlers in soaked and drined peatmoss media. I have two large tubs of these beauties and they have been doing well. Time to move some of them outdoors and see how they do there. If either of you haven't tried these yet and are interested I can send you some starters if you like. I don't know if they will ultimatel establish themselves in the garden, but that is my hopes. The red wigglers in the horse manure compost will stay in the garden where I plant tomatoes, peppers, cukes and squash through the gardening season, but they do not survive the harsh winter months.

Hank, my new neighbor of two years has planted a large garden next to mine. He works for the Ag Dept. here in Helena, and is a valuable resource. He is the one who came up with a source for hay and the well aged cow manure, all within a few miles of our place. I plan to use an isolated 4' x 60' row for pepper plantings this season. In the fall I will surround this row with hay bails an cover the bails with the window panes from our Restore. After the pepper plants are removed I will add several feet of this aged cow manure between the hay bails and cover with some alfalfa hay before replacing the widow panes. I will then add as many of the euros as I can to this 'windrow' and see if they survive the winter. For feeding the outdoor euros I have ground up corn cobs and any corn which is not suited for personal use. I usually get about 50 to 60 gallons of this material from 480 feet of corn plantings. I simply spread it on the surface of the compost under the alfa hay and wet the hay down. The euros do not like being disturbed so I have been careful in feeding the wormkashi to the indoor euro bins. Surface feeding will probably work best on the outdoor euros.

This is really late in the thread, but I just joined Dave's Garden. After my pepper plants had been in the house about a month, I noticed that they were covered with aphids. I tried a chive spray that worked great . Snip up some chives and cover with boiling water. After it has cooled, remove the chives and spray your plants. It has been about 2 1/2 months since I sprayed mine and some aphids are just beginning to come back. Mine were so badly infested, I did have to spray the plants 3 times. No chives in Montana at this time of the year, so I thought green onion tops might work!.

Might, I had not heard that remedy before. The boiling part is interesting. I don't have problems with outdoor aphids, or newly planted pepper plants. The problem always seems to come in the fall when I try to bring potted peppers inside. Will have plenty of fresh chives then. I have some frozen ones but no aphid problems at present. Will add that to my list of remedies. TYVM

67 in Las Vegas today. LOL....

OffTheGrid..."Might"...don't know where that came from.

Sharon -67 here! Just kidding, but might as well be. I could send you some snow for your strawberries.

ive posted earlier i used aerated casting tea on my roses this last spring/summer.. and i always have had aphids..
this yr zip.. ? not a scientific example.. but for me.. im going to put it on the roses this spring/summer.. see if does the
trick again...
high 30s here.. an occasional 40s.. but theyre comming!!!!!!! :)

I gave up on my pepper plants again last year. The aphids just took over.

I brought in 1 pepper plant last winter & it was fine.This year I brought in 6, including last year's.(It was a mystery pepper for Home Depot. Labeled as a mini yellow bell. Fruited as an orange -colored: long, thin & sweet. Brought them all in the end of October. Cleaned them all up as usual (pots washed, plants rinsed, sprayed with a dilute soap spray,spiders cleaned off & chased out)
They all looked good, even had 2 that kept their fruit.
In December, it was The Attack Of The Aphids!! but only on the peppers.All my herbs and houseplants are fine. These aphids only like peppers.I tried the mild soapspray & the peppers didn't like it. Started dropping aphid coverd leaves.I tried just cleaning & gentle hosing, but I'm down to 2 plants. Lost old Orange Mystery.
I'll try the Chive water. Any port in a storm.
Katie

KTMouse: The chive water has really kept my pepper plants going. I brought in 3 plants last October and they're looking really great. A couple of weeks ago I top-dressed them with some worm castings and this week there are blossoms on all 3 plants! And it's not because of the huge amount of light they're getting--though I do have them in a window. When the sun shines, they get about 2 hours of sun.

If you are using Diatomaceous Earth on edible plants, make sure it is the food grade version only. http://www.gardenharvestsupply.com/ProductCart/pc/Diatomaceous-Earth-Food-Grade-p39.htm

Organic_Joe, I never heard of an edible or food grade diatomeous earth before. The diatomaceous earth I have been using is from a pet supply source and I would presume it is a reagent grade but nothing to verify that. Since it is used in aquarium filters it is probably the more pure form as mentioned in your Garden Harvest Supply Inc. posting. I have purchased diatomaceous earth in bulk which was used in a German filter press and it had visible impurities and came in various grades.

My method of applying diatomeous earth to potted pepper plants was to save this material from the filter after cleaning an aquarium. I also used a reagent grade activated carbon powder which was added to the filter media as well. I saved this material from repeated cleanings, decanted it, and then let it dry in a large bowl on top of my garage freezer. I treated several potted pepper plants which had become infested with aphids while on a two week trip. I simply worked in this dried material on the top soil surface after flushing the aphids off the plants. I can't quantify how much I used but I saw a significant reduction in aphids on the treated plants. The sweet peppers were the worst from the standpoint of the number of aphids per plant and probably beyond salvage; however I wanted to see how this material worked.

In reading your posted article Organic_Joe I didn't quite get the significance of how the impure grades of diatomaceous earth negatively affect the plants or their fruits. I would presume that their recommendations for potted plants such as peppers would be to start with adding this material to the container growing media prior to transplanting the pepper seedlings which makes sense to me. I would have to do come calculating to come up with an application rate for whatever sized container I would be using but not a problem. My conclusion is that this stuff works better than anything else I have tried in the past for potted pepper plants brought indoors in the fall. Since I don't have the aphid problem any other time I could not comment on that issue.

this will be my 2nd yr using tea on my roses.. ive read more on whether it really repels aphids..or just the benifit of the casting tea is benificial to
the roses..and the spraying just drives the aphids away..is the reason.. im just happy the aphids dont bother my roses much anymore..
roses are just starting to bud out now.. weeded good around them.. i got tons of scratches..sigh..
this yr im also putting in some mollases in my spray mix.. thinking it will aid in casting tea to stick to the roses more..
hoping spring is just around the bend !!!!