Garden 34th Street: I May Have Killed My Peppers...

I used to say I had the "Thumb of Doom." I couldn't grow much of anything, and didn't really care. But then I discovered I could grow food in my window (and help grow food in the garden upstate), and things changed. I shed that black thumb and had some successes...and some failures.

I think I've had another serious FAIL. I think I've killed my peppers.

I've been having some MAJOR aphid issues over the last few weeks. I've had these little buggers on my plants on and off for a while (which is so super-weird, since I live in Midtown Manhattan), and nothing I did ever really got rid of them. Finally, one day last week, I looked up and there had been some kind of hatching. There were aphids EVERYWHERE. Crawling up the windows. Hanging out on the leaves and windowsills. Black ones. White ones. Purple ones. (OK, no purple ones, but I wouldn't have been surprised if there had been.)

Turning to the Interweb again, I decided to try a combination of approaches. I put the plants in the shower to wash away the aphids, and then I sprayed them with a dilution of organic soap, alcohol, and water suggested on some random website.

Oh Interweb...why do I trust you?

Two or three days later, I opened my curtains, and noticed all of the pepper plants had started to shed their leaves! And they haven't been getting any better.

So, this may be the end of the great pepper experiment. They don't look quite dead yet (there are some baby leaves, but I can't tell if they predate my stupidity), but they're kind of almost there. I'll keep you posted...