Pests on my husband's habaneros

[AMKuska]

those almost look like baby crickets, but i'm not sure yet (there's a lot of different bugs out there!). so far that is my first guess. about how big are they? (in mm ).

a non-chemical approach may be to take them outside on a warmer day and spray them off with some water. insecticidal soaps would be a milder next step up. hand picking and brushing off with a small brush may also help reduce their population.

They're super tiny. About the size of a small aphid. Right now I carry them to my sink, turn them sideways, and blast them all with water until there are no bugs on the plant itself. Then I spray with soap. I've ordered copper tape to give that a try.

Removing hundreds of bugs every day does seem to erode the population. They just seem to keep coming back.

 

[AMKuska]

Please keep us posted how the tape works. I've used only the copper wire, but I've read about the tape. If the tape isn't 100% effective (I'm not sure what bugs you're fighting), the wire might work as it operates on a slightly different principle than the tape. I am on year 2 of overwintering plants totally bug free; I had absolute bug plagues years past (which contaminated the next years seedlings in the house too!), so it's somewhat of a miracle to finally be able to do it without problems. Good luck!

The wire tape came yesterday. We wrapped it around a chopstick and stabbed it into a very buggy pepper pot. Today, all the bugs on it were dead. I rinsed them off so I could see if any new ones appear.

How exactly does this work? Never seen anything like it.

 

[Shades-of-Oregon]

I have tried the copper tape a few years works for snails and slugs but not much luck for gnats that fly.
Soak soil with Neem oil works well for soil gnats. Keep the top soil covered in small rocks like aquarium rocks to keep soil gnats from entering or exiting the soil. Try to let the top inch of soil dry out before watering. Like suggested earlier grinding egg shells in coffee grinder and by adding a top layer on the soil also keeps soil gnats out. I use this every year on my indoor plants.

 

[heirloomgal]

That is so great you had wonderful success with it!

My own feeling about why copper works so well is that we honestly don't fully know. Lots of resources give lots of good reasons, and they're all probably right, but I think that there are also principles involved which we haven't fully understood. All of that put together is the secret sauce. But one of the main reasons which I think factors in is (if I made a guess), some insects have hemocyanin instead of hemoglobin as means to transport oxygen to their cells. Hemocyanin is a copper based protein, and it binds oxygen molecules. So, it probably messes with oxygen transport. And being such little creatures fragile to the subtler levels of life, the presence of the copper causes death via oxygen limitation.

My hope for you is your next observation with the copper is it funneling nitrogen into the soil for you, causing lush vigorous growth. However this method works, it's atmospheric in nature for both pest elimination and fertility.