"I planted Holy basil and regular basil this spring. The honeybees and several different bees, wasps and butterflies love it. Along with lots of green spiders. Unfortunately, I've only seen the green spiders eat beneficials." Thanks for mentioning the basil, it is another excellent bee plant for the vegetable garden. As for spiders... my observations mirror yours. Spiders are indiscriminate killers - and they are just as likely to kill beneficial insects as harmful ones. They are often listed as "beneficial", but I would rate them neutral at best. I've also had some nasty bites from spiders, and those bites heal slowly, so I don't have a great love for them. Fortunately, the wasp population in my property is very high - including mud daubers. Some of them hunt spiders, and do so very effectively... so the spider population in my garden is very low. Only those which spin webs at night & hide during the day escape the wasps, which suits me just fine. Never tried Murphy's Oil. I've used insecticidal soap, sometimes as part of the following recipe. It was contributed by Jimster several years ago, and is a great starting point for formulating your own insect sprays: INSECTICIDE: A U.S.D.A. formula combining oil and soap is effective in killing soft-bodied insects. Mix 1 cup peanut, safflower, corn, soybean, or sunflower oil with 1 tablespoon liquid dishwashing detergent. To make the spray, use 11/2 teaspoons of the oil-detergent mixture for each cup of water. As I mentioned above, I've tried several different variations of soap spray, sometimes with oil or alcohol. Since soap spray primarily works by blocking insect respiration, I even used sugar as an additive, when I was trying to kill cucumber beetles. Figured that would really clog their spiracles, and it seemed to help. Molasses might be even more effective, provided you can get it to dissolve. The advantage of using insecticidal soap (such as Safers) is that it is potassium based, and will cause less leaf damage. You can also use dish soap or baby shampoo, which is what I normally use. But in stronger concentrations (which may be required, depending upon what pest it will be applied to) there may be some leaf damage if the spray is allowed to remain on the leaves. Provided you are just targeting small areas, that is no big deal... but if spraying young plants, or covering a larger area (such as a squash bug infestation) then the spray should be washed off when it has done its work. Sucking insects die pretty quickly, you could rinse the leaves off after 15 minutes or so. For beetles, you just need to watch to see how effective the spray will be... it's possible a second spraying might be necessary. Beetle larvae are easier to kill than the adults, which can be remarkably resistant to soap spray... they will be temporarily paralyzed, but slowly recover. Cucumber beetles are a great example of this, they are pretty hard to kill. You really need full body coverage when spraying beetles, and a little alcohol in the mix will prevent them from flying away while you give them a good soaking. When trying out a soap spray the first time, observe its effect on the target insect. It's worth mentioning that while soap sprays have little to no no lingering toxic effect, they will kill most insects they are sprayed on. I've used the alcohol spray in my previous post to kill yellowjackets, it will knock them right out of the air. If bees or other beneficials get sprayed, it will kill them too.

you can buy ladybug and lacewings online to take care of your aphids, ladybugs and their young are the best as they are aphid eating machines but there are some ants that farm aphids like cattle. the aphids give the ants a sugary food and the ants protect the aphids even move them to better plants. the lacewing looking bug I agree looks like a type of mayfly. then there is the hoverfly, the spider is a what we call in the states a daddy longlegs the small ones do eat aphids and other bugs, the little wasp is also a good guy he hunts for spiders and larve of things like moths. as far as your peppers go I have friends that plant them in pots in colder areas so they can take them inside when winter hit and also grow them in their gardens with much success. my grandfather grew hot peppers every year he started them inside sooner then normal like in December or January by the end of summer his pepper plants were 4 ft. tall and about the same size round and full of peppers

Hello folks - thanks for shedding some light on this - if anything it makes me relieved to hear bugs may not be at play so I dont have to worry about stuff breeding etc lol. I dont think Clemson does soil testing here, but I heard something local from someone at work which I will follow up on. The sun has been the same every spring/ summer - no change there. We moved here 2 years ago during fall - they were growing fine then. Next summer I may not have watered them enough as I saw burn spots on the hydrangea leaves and some of them were big patches. Following fall I hired someone for some yard work and they said our hydrangeas/ rose etc. had grown a lot and needed trimming so they went ahead and trimmed everything to 2-3 feet. The spring after (this year) - these guys esp the hydrangeas have been growing like crazy with less flower output than last year. I have also been watering more regularly - although there are still some burn spots - not as bad as last summer. So that's about all the history I know about these guys ;-) Btw - I m worried the pyroligneous acid will kill useful soil bacteria/ bugs as well. And doesn't it go against the theory that bugs are not at play here? Thanks.

troops87: Look underneath the leaves and on the stems, especially on the rosemary which seems to be the worst hit. If you can find tiny red dots hanging around, then it's spider mites. Leafhopper nymphs usually fly when you disturb the leaves, so look out for that too. I don't think it's aphids.