I used to have problems with aphids every once in a while. Last year I set up a 55 gallon plastic drum up on 4 courses of concrete blocks, and put in a stem that would connect to small spaghetti tubing with mini valves which made a gravity fed drip irrigation system. Sometimes I have to go out of town for a few days and last year I was asked to make a presentation at a horticultural conference. At that time, I was having to water my plants every day. (they are in containers) This way I can water my pepper plants for up to 9 days without being there. About 3 years ago I wrote this article for the journal of The Cycad Society:
http://www.cycad.org/documents/Broome-Coffee-2007.pdf
which was about killing the Asian scale that has now killed at least a billion dollars worth of sagos in Florida alone. If you look at the article, you will see my blue barrel that I use to brew, what I will call in this post "coffee juice" For cycads and the other plants I am growing, I am using the juice as a direct contact spray to kill all kinds of scales, aphids, mealy bugs, white flies and spider mites. In this case I added about 4 gallons of coffee juice to my other barrel every other time I filled it up to water my peppers. All last year, none of my plants were bothered by aphids, or any other insect, for that matter.
So this year I tried something else. I mixed the used coffee grounds about 10% of the volume of soil and for the plants I did this to, I have not had aphids on the plants. Earlier this year, I heard about the Butch T Scorpion peppers, so obviously, I had to find some plants and buy them. I bought a couple of those as well as another scorpion and some Naga Morich plants. I don't know if the plants had eggs on them or what, but in no time at all, every single plant was covered with aphids. I had not mixed the soil with these like I did with my Bhut Jolokias held over from last season. Instead of spraying the plants, I thought it would be good for an experiment. (I experiment a lot) I mixed up an inch of the used grounds in the top 3 inches of the soil and watered it in real well. It took about 3 1/2 weeks, but to my amazement, just last week, I watched every single aphid dry up and die over a 3 day period. What has happened is that the pepper plants systemically drew in the alkaloids from the grounds and it either killed the aphids directly, or made the plant unpalatable so the aphids died from starvation. I have already noticed that using the grounds will kill scales for 4 1/2 months after an application, so I am assuming right now that the grounds will make my plants immune to predation for about the same amount of time. I will of course watch what happens and note how well this works out in the long run. Anyway, I hope this is of interest to some of you. This is my first post on this forum. I look forward to talking about growing hot peppers more in the future. Tom
http://www.cycad.org/documents/Broome-Coffee-2007.pdf
which was about killing the Asian scale that has now killed at least a billion dollars worth of sagos in Florida alone. If you look at the article, you will see my blue barrel that I use to brew, what I will call in this post "coffee juice" For cycads and the other plants I am growing, I am using the juice as a direct contact spray to kill all kinds of scales, aphids, mealy bugs, white flies and spider mites. In this case I added about 4 gallons of coffee juice to my other barrel every other time I filled it up to water my peppers. All last year, none of my plants were bothered by aphids, or any other insect, for that matter.
So this year I tried something else. I mixed the used coffee grounds about 10% of the volume of soil and for the plants I did this to, I have not had aphids on the plants. Earlier this year, I heard about the Butch T Scorpion peppers, so obviously, I had to find some plants and buy them. I bought a couple of those as well as another scorpion and some Naga Morich plants. I don't know if the plants had eggs on them or what, but in no time at all, every single plant was covered with aphids. I had not mixed the soil with these like I did with my Bhut Jolokias held over from last season. Instead of spraying the plants, I thought it would be good for an experiment. (I experiment a lot) I mixed up an inch of the used grounds in the top 3 inches of the soil and watered it in real well. It took about 3 1/2 weeks, but to my amazement, just last week, I watched every single aphid dry up and die over a 3 day period. What has happened is that the pepper plants systemically drew in the alkaloids from the grounds and it either killed the aphids directly, or made the plant unpalatable so the aphids died from starvation. I have already noticed that using the grounds will kill scales for 4 1/2 months after an application, so I am assuming right now that the grounds will make my plants immune to predation for about the same amount of time. I will of course watch what happens and note how well this works out in the long run. Anyway, I hope this is of interest to some of you. This is my first post on this forum. I look forward to talking about growing hot peppers more in the future. Tom
)
When I shook the bottle, the water turned solid BLACK. Has now been sitting in a windowsill for less than a day, and even after settling, it is already the color of iced tea. 
), while I also wanted to give cycadjungle's idea a try, I started thinking I needed to move beyond organic approaches to something a bit stronger. 
