Us gardeners all hate those nasty bugs called aphids. We hate them cause they suck the juices right out of the leaves of our beloved plants. So how do you get rid of them, you ask? Well, you have a few ways. You can squish them with your fingers. I’ll do that if there aren’t very many. Or you can put your hose nozzle on jet spray and knock them off with water. The only problem with those two options is you could inadvertently also kill baby ladybugs and caterpillar eggs. Both baby ladybugs and adult ladybugs eat aphids, so we don’t want to kill them. And those itty bitty caterpillar eggs turn into the caterpillars that eat the leaves of the host plants we’re trying to protect from the aphids. It’s all one big circle of life, isn’t it.
Yes, there is a third option of using chemicals. I do not treat any of the plants in my personal garden or in Bella’s garden with chemicals to get rid of the aphids because so many of my plants are host and/or nectar plants for butterflies and moths and the chemicals could kill them. What I do instead is let these good bugs: aphids, lacewings, parasitic wasps, aphid wasps, praying mantis, damsel bugs, soldier beetles, predatory midges, spiders, ambush bugs, pirate bugs, big-eyed bugs, etc, come do their job and eat the aphids. So, yeah, you might find some bad bug aphids on the plants you buy from me, that’s just nature’s way of giving the good bugs something to eat. So, please, let them eat aphids!!
The plants I’ve found aphids on the most often are the milkweeds cause aphids love milkweed plants. But. I also see tons of ladybugs in both gardens on all the milkweed doing their jobs as aphid killers.
Happy diggin’ in the dirt.
Jeanni and Ziva
Beautiful Gardens Begin Here
