Our first aphid assault this year!

[chuck_n_grace]

Hi,
The past four days have been absolutely gorgeous! Plants in the greenhouse have done incredibly well. We had four plants left over from last fall...green peppers. Anyhow, tonight we noticed that these plants had shiny stuff all over the leaves. We looked closely and we saw hundreds upon hundreds of aphid eggs, dead little ones, and a few live and growing green ones.

Panic set in quickly so we scanned the new seedlings. They all seemed quite okay. Grabbed our organic spray bottle, pumped it up, and sprayed all of our plants. It contains 'neem oil'. It really helped last year so we're hoping it is still effective.

Ants? We have fire ants. They were building a mound in our greenhouse. So, I sprinkled cinnamon around the mound on one day...and again a few days later. We noticed they were gone tonight. We did find ants in one of those infested plants...not sure if they just moved or if that was a different colony.

Do you have any home remedies you like to use? We're in our second year of organic methods and would be curious to learn how you might deal with issues.

Regards,
Chuck

[homegrown]

Hi there, if you harvest elder leaf you can boil it up in a large pot full of water for around 30mins and then strain. oput the liquid in a clean food grade spray bottle and spray around your plants it also deters white butterfly and many other pests, slao plant garlic in borders around your plants as well as roses and it also helps deter them.

Cheers Homegrown aka The Greenman aka Richard

[Mortimer657]

http://www.defenders.co.uk/pest-solutio ... ntrol.html

Have you ever looked at these ? ^^^^

You might be able to find a similar company in the States that supplies these. I've used them and they are lethally effective at taking care of the adult and young aphids. . Just a quick one , though only useable against aphids once hatched.

[chuck_n_grace]

Mortimer,
Thanks for the link. I'll follow up on that. One of best and simplest methods for organic gardening to grab the unwanted critter between you fingers...and squish!! Grace tackled a few stems this week and pulled off quite a few.

Regards,
Chuck