Look, a butterfly!

I’ve been battling an aphid infestation on my chillies for a few months now. I’ve tried using natural killers like Pyrethrum spray, but to no avail. It kills them on contact, but then they come back. I wouldn’t mind having them there, except they chew away at the new fruit and leaves, which then fall off, leaving a barren twig shrub where once there was a lush chili plant. Here is a picture of the little buggers.

After some internet research, I found that there are many home remedies for dealing with aphids ranging from oil sprays to chili powder sprays to dish washing detergent sprays, but all seem to be pretty crap at actually getting rid of the aphids permanently. The only thing that seems to be successful at keeping the aphid population at bay is their natural predator, the lady beetle. It seems that you can buy lady beetles (they come in packs of 1000!), but I haven’t been able to locate a distributor in Brisbane, or even on line in Australia. This is a shame, since the sight of a thousand lady beetles on my balcony would be amazing!

More research, however, revealed that buying the lady beetles doesn’t work that well anyway, since they just fly off. The best thing, apparently, is to just let the aphids be, and wait for lady beetles to come to you. So we decided to wait. And wait. And wait. Then yesterday, I had a peek and found this scary looking thing munching away at a little aphid.

It turns out that this is actually a lady beetle larva. Incredible! After looking more closely, I found quite a few of them slithering around, looking for some grub. I had a lot of trouble imagining how this thing actually turns into a lady beetle, but youtube, as always, has come to the rescue. Here is a video of the larva turning into a pupa. I did end up finding a few of these pupae on the plants as well. They kind of look like klingon lady beetles.

This video shows the pulpa turning into the final product.

Now I guess we just wait and see if these lady beetles do their job.