Hi crayphish, I'm always a bit concerned when people talk about spraying with soap or botanical sprays like garlic or capsicum 'just in case'. The thing is, insecticidal soap and most botanical sprays don't distinguish between pests and the 'good' insects that control them. Even more unfortunately, in a lot of cases the 'good' insects are MORE susceptible to pesticides than the pests. I know there are some parasitic wasps (tiny wasps that lay their eggs in other insects, often the ones we consider pests, like aphids, whiteflies etc) - Aphidius and Encarsia species spring to mind - that are affected by insecticidal soap. The soap spray won't affect the leafminers, that's for sure, unless it has some extra property because of the mintiness, because the adult leafminer flies are long gone and the leafminer larvae are snug in their little burrow. I wonder if the leafminers even requires any action. It looks like a Liriomyza species, probably L. trifolii, which is considered a pest in commercial flower and celery crops, but fruiting crops like beans, tomatoes, cukes etc are rarely bothered. If you leave well enough alone the native parasitic wasps, Diglyphus species and the like, will probably come along and provide reasonable control for you. A bit of leaf damage won't hurt your plants and unless it's severe, it shouldn't affect yields either. Tracey

I've never actually been certain whether thrips truly prefer pale colored roses, or whether it's simply that their feeding damage is much more obvious on such roses (as it understandably would be), but certainly among rose enthusiasts it's widely accepted that thrips seem to prefer feeding upon the pale roses. If I recall correctly (not certain of that) in commercial flower growing greenhouses when they want to check for the presence of thrips the growers will set out yellow cardboard rectangles coated in a sticky substance. That way they can track over time how many thrips get stuck to the rectangle, and make an estimate of how heavy the greenhouse's thrips infestation is. If the grower is practicing "integrated pest management" that sort of information is important, because the grower will only apply pesticide once the infestation in the greenhouse is heavy enough to economically justify the application.

I thought when it goes through metamorphosis it would turn an orange color but these are black with yellowish/orange spots. Very tiny too. I've got ladybugs here but they are orange with the blackish spots. Julia

Hey all, so in the end, it just turns out that there was a lot of ants and those buffalo treehoppers (which I took are care best I could). However, on my other plant at home, I noticed these tiny little insects and I'm having trouble identifying them. They are only on the top of the leaves or on the buds of the peppers and seem to leave some sort of clear excretion behind. Here are some pics, did my best to capture them: (on the leaf): (here you can see it on the one pod that is focused in on:) (unfocused, but they are on the pod just north of the big one hanging down:) (another pic, mostly to show the excretion they leave behind.. its shiny) Thanks in advance for any insight!