I live in South Florida and in December of 2018, I bought a ghost pepper plant at a local nursery. I had grown plants before, but never a super hot pepper. I got it because it had half a dozen peppers already growing and it was just a matter of time for those to ripen and soon I would be able to tell if it was something worth keeping or just move on. Several weeks later, the little plant grew more and more, about 5 of those original peppers ripened and I made a Chile Ceniza sauce, based on a Yucatecan recipe that I learned from watching a lady and her family running a street taco stand in Cozumel. I just replaced the habaneros with my 5 little ghost peppers and the sauce turned out amazingly good. I was hooked instantly and decided to expand my repertoire of plants. Invested hours researching and selecting different hot and super hot pepper varieties, purchased several seeds online and went at it. Learned a lot from YouTube videos posted by Peter Stanley and Khan Starr, as well as a series of books and guides I bought on Amazon. Started seeds and moved them into cups. It was around late June 2019 when things started to look very promising. Moved plants from cups to larger pots and shortly thereafter, problems started. Rainy season brought whiteflies and they took a liking to my plants. At first, I did not think much of it, just googled here and there, saw a few more videos from other knowledgeable contributors and when I started to see a decline in the health of my plants, I went to my local home improvement superstore and got some neem oil. It’s sort of worked, but I would rate it around 60% effective at best. The whiteflies would bounce back and just attack my pepper plants relentlessly. I lost a few of them from whiteflies and after trying more neem oil, dish soap, sevin, plant soap, other store bought pesticides, I realized it was just going to be a compromise. Some of the plants would make it, others would not. More research brought me to GrowSafe. I bought a little bottle of their insecticide on Amazon, called the support line, spoke with a representative, prepared a 3% batch and went to town. This worked much better than the neem oil, and much better than anything I’ve ever tried before. I would rate it at 97-99% effective after one application... and 100% after 2 consecutive treatments, 2 days apart. That was the end to my whitefly problem. Then came hurricane Dorian and my plants developed more problems, some sort of bacteria that from researching a bit, I concluded was from too much rain water and excessive humidity. That bacteria pretty much whipped my plants out in a matter of hours. The leaves just developed some sort of slimy appearance and would fall off in no time. Fortunately, I still had a bunch of small plants in cups, the ones that did not grow as nicely as the ones I moved into larger pots. I applied GrowSafe to the runts of the litter, most of which were still in cups, discarded all the larger plants and pots, pretty much started again. My larger original ghost pepper plant got a big trimming, it had turned into a small tree... but I could not move it indoors during the hurricane and to help it pull through sustained winds, I had no choice but to prune it big time. By the way, it was too heavy and making itself at home in a 20 gallon pot. It was just too big, so I pruned it heavily, and hoped for it to bounce back. After the storm passed and I had a chance to clean up, I had 20 new little plants trying to grow, plus a larger one trimmed down to almost nothing. Went at it with lots of enthusiasm and sure enough, things took off once again. Back on track. Plants just took off, they grew in a matter of weeks. I stopped using the GrowSafe because I did not see the need, even though I was advised to keep a low maintenance regime to help them stay healthy. A couple of weeks went by and all of the sudden, I started to see a new problem. This time it was specific to new growth on the pepper plants. Just the very tip of the plants. Not all, just several varieties. I lost all Brazilian Starfish plants from this. I took my camera, fitted it with a 100mm macro lens and figured out the problem. It was some type of spider mite, so I fixed a 3% batch of GrowSafe and that immediately cured the problem with one application. Managed to save my charapitas, FL grove peppers, rocotos, ghost peppers, piñas, and a couple of bird pepper plants. I should have learned my lesson by now, but since the weather is starting to change for the better, temps are cooling down in my neck of the woods, I let off the GrowSafe because again, I did not see the need to keep re-applying, specially if it all is looking pretty good. This week, I noticed another problem, lots of ants hiding inside new growth and damage around the tips; however, not really like the spider mites. In any case, I took the camera out and found aphids had now started to attack some of the plants. GrowSafe to the rescue and we are doing pretty good right now. Ants apparently farm aphids as they like to eat their excrement. My larger ghost pepper, the little tree that got me started last December is doing great. It’s full of new blossoms, healthy growth and the trunk of the little tree is easily one inch in diameter if not more. The runts I planted after the initial setback have blossomed too, with several peppers starting to show just now. Haven’t harvested much just yet, but in a few days if all goes well, we should be getting some fruits. My take home message after this experience is to keep GrowSafe in my garden supply cabinet and to follow a health sustaining regime from here on out. I would recommend this product, specially if you are not wanting to try an assortment of different products that in my personal experience, seemed to provide some relief, but not cure. GrowSafe as of this writing, is the best product I have been able to find thus far. PS: I’ve used it on ornamentals, specifically white roses, and it’s helped to keep thrips off new growth. This stuff works.
