Learn How To Manage Your Aphid Infestation
- What is an Aphid?
- About the Aphid
- My Aphid Battle Techniques
- Take a close look at an Aphid
- Natural Aphid Management Techniques and Methods
- Tips for Using Ladybugs
- Garden Videos about Aphids
- Growing During the Aphid Off-Seasons
- Natural Aphid Control Products
- Trap Crops
- Advice from Fellow Gardeners
- Check Your Local Gardening Conditions
- How do you deal with Aphids in your garden?
What is an Aphid?
Aphids, also known as plant lice (and in Britain as greenflies),Not to be confused with "jumping plant lice" are small plant-eating insects, and members of the superfamily Aphidoidea.Aphids are also sometimes known as blackflies and greenflies (page 86 of Bugs of the World, George C. McGavin, Facts on File, 1993) Aphids are among the most destructive insect pests on cultivated plants in temperate regions.Bugs of the World, George C. McGavin, Facts on File, 1993, ISBN 0816027374 The damage they do to plants has made them enemies of farmers and gardeners the world over, but from a purely zoological standpoint they are a very successful group of organisms.Piper, Ross (2007), Extraordinary Animals: An Encyclopedia of Curious and Unusual Animals, Greenwood Press.
About 4,400 species of 10 families are known. Historically, many fewer families were recognized, as most species were included in the family Aphididae. Around 250 species are serious pests for agriculture and forestry as well as an annoyance for gardeners. They vary in length from one to ten millimetres.
Natural enemies include predatory lady beetles (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae), hoverfly larvae (Diptera: Syrphidae), parasitic wasps, aphid midge larvae, crab spidersPhoto of crab spider eating Aphis asclepiadis aphids on common milkweed, Anurag Agrawal, Phytophagy Laboratory, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Department of Entomology at Cornell University. lacewings (Neuroptera: Chrysopidae), and entomopathogenic fungi like Lecanicillium lecanii and the Entomophthorales.
Aphids are distributed worldwide, but are most common in temperate zones. Also, in contrast to many taxa, species diversity is much lower in the tropics than in the temperate zones. They can migrate great distances, mainly through passive dispersal by riding on winds. For example, the currant lettuce aphid (Nasonovia ribisnigri Mosley) is believed to have spread from New Zealand to Tasmania in this way.Scientist battles lettuce aphid, Pip Courtney, Landline, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, October 30, 2005, Retrieved 1 January 2007 Aphids have also been spread by human transportation of infested plant materials.
About the Aphid
- Gordon's Aphid Page
- An introduction to the biology and ecology of Aphids
- Awesome Aphids
- Are colonies of little bugs covering the leaves and stems of your plants? Aphid populations have been high recently in the state, which is somewhat unusual this late in the season (normally the spring generations are more predominant). While you may view them as just another nasty to be eliminated, they're also really fascinating creatures, with bizarre lifestyles and eating habits and they're also dinner for lots of other insects.
- MicroAngela - Aphid
- Aphids are insects that are parasites on the roots, leaves, and stems of plants. Aphids have a proboscis which contains four sharp stylets which is used to pierce plant tissue and suck out the nutritive juices. Horn-shaped tubes at the rear end of the aphid are called cornicles, and they secrete a waxy substance. Aphids also secrete a sweet substance called honeydew, and some kinds of ants actually hide and keep aphids to "farm" them for this "candy".
My Aphid Battle Techniques
Although it's early in the gardening season, we've already found aphids in our garden.One of the biggest reasons the backyard gardener gets aphids is that no one really has enough room to practice proper crop roation. This involves letting areas lie fallow (unused) or a season or two, planting cover crops that deter pests and replenish soil nutrients. At my house, that would pretty much amount to not gardening or a year or two. So, we vary and rotate our crops as much as we can, and battle the aphids as we go.
If you've got some aphids on indoor plants, it's often really easy to just squish them with your fingers. They look like teeny green specs, almost not big enough to be insects. I had a housemate once who grew orchids and this was her preferred method for dealing with them. She said it relieved her stress too.
Spraying the aphids off outdoor plants with a strong stream of water is also an organic method of pest control. This works well if you have larger and better established plants, and not just little seedlings or starts. Further down this lens you can also find insecticidal soaps, which are organic for humans and plants, but still lethal to aphids.
There are also beneficial insects that love to eat aphids. Ladybugs and green lacewings are the most common. We're going to release ladybugs into our garden this summer and see how that helps.
You can also plant "trap crops" as a way of dealing with aphids.
Take a close look at an Aphid
Natural Aphid Management Techniques and Methods
- Aphid Control
- Aphid control means 1) understanding what this pest looks like so you're 2) using the right technique to control the problem.
- Natural Insect Control: Aphids
- Ants "farm" aphids often keeping them in their nest during winter, then bringing them out in spring and placing them on the host plant. The ants eat the honeydew the aphids produce and move them from plant to plant spreading any diseases that are present.
- Homemade Aphid Control - A Natural Way To Kill Aphids
- Getting rid of aphids is no easy task. Large masses of them seem to appear overnight and without quick treatment, they can overwhelm and kill a plant. Using an organic, homemade aphid control is best for your plants, the environment and beneficial bugs in your garden. Let's look at a few organic control of aphids.
- Green Lacewings for Aphid Control in your organic garden
- The green lacewing is another one of the most effective predatory insect for aphid control in your organic garden and orchards.
- gardenpunks: Organic Aphid Control
- I've talked a lot about the aphid problem with our yard. Yesterday, we made a visit to OSH to pick up a few thing Home Depot or Lowe's would never carry (ie. Horticultural Oil, Rooting Hormone), and we grabbed two tubs of Lady Bugs too.
Tips for Using Ladybugs
Ladybugs love to eat aphids, so they are a nice element to have in the battle against aphids. An adult can eat up to 50 aphids per day. I got some at our local garden center and the woman at their info desk helpfully gave me some tips on releasing them into my garden. Here is a picture I took of the mesh bag with the bugs in it.Ladybugs are kept in refrigerators by commercial garden centers to keep them in a state of hibernation. When they come out of the cold and go into the garden, their instincts are to fly around, find a mate, get busy and then lay eggs. It's this second generation of bugs from the laid eggs that really are the aphid-eating army the gardener is trying to establish.
She suggested I release the ladybugs in the evening and to spread them around in the garden near where we have our vegetables. She also suggested that I not release them all at once, but instead to put half in the garden, then put the rest back in the fridge, then do a second release several days later. This helps distribute the bugs in the garden and helps insure that some of them stay and make baby bugs before flying off or being eaten by something larger.
The ladybug life cycle goes from egg to larvae to pupa to adult, with each stage taking between one and three weeks each, depending on weather conditions. So if the ladybugs I release successfully mate and lay eggs, we'll get resident lady bugs being born from the end of June through August.
Garden Videos about Aphids
Growing During the Aphid Off-Seasons
over-wintering vegetable crops
When I was growing up, I always thought of summer as the time when you gardened and never really gave a thought to the rest of the year. Now, as an adult who is interested in gardening, I've learned that there's a lot of gardening that goes on year-round, and this can be useful when fighting that backyard aphid!Summer is prime aphid time, that's just a fact of weather. However, if you have certain crops that are really being attacked by aphids, you might want to investigate if it would work in your zone to grow some varieties in fall or over-winter. Fall and winter crops are planted late in summer or in the fall, and the vegetables mature during the cooler months or get established, take a few months off and then really get growing during the spring.
You may have to work more to protect plant seedlings that get going during late summer so that they can get a good enough of a headstart against the present insect population, but you'll have a lot less bugs to battle if you explore cool weather gardening! Once the first frost happens, the aphid population goes way down. Look for winter varietals of your summer faves and look into options like cold frames and cloches too.
Natural Aphid Control Products
Indoor Pharm Organic Insecticidal Soap plus Miticide and Fungicide, 35 Fluid Ounce Spray Bottle
Amazon Price: $12.95 (as of 07/12/2009) 
Usually ships in 1-2 business days
EcoSMART Organic Insect Killer RTS
Amazon Price: $13.97 (as of 07/12/2009)
Usually ships in 1-2 business days
All Natural Insect Repellent - Garl-Or3 Yard & Garden Spray - No More Flies, Mosquitos, Ants, Aphids or Fleas - 16 oz. covers approximately 1.25 acres - Made in the USA
Amazon Price: $21.99 (as of 07/12/2009)
Usually ships in 1-2 business days
YARD SAFE REPELLENT GRANULES
Amazon Price: $15.99 (as of 07/12/2009)
Usually ships in 4-5 business days
Trap Crops
give the aphids what they want,so that you can get rid of them
The theory behind trap cropping is that since bugs really love certain plants, you can use that love to lure the aphids away from other plants you're trying to grow. Trap crops can be planted right next to the regular crops, or in areas that are a bit away from what you are trying to protect.
Two of the plants that work best for this are nasturtiums and marigolds: they are lovely flowers and aphids go crazy for them. What you want to do is mix these blossoms in with our vegetables, and then when the aphids infest the flowers, you pull them up and dispose of them, aphids and all. You'll want to have successive plantings of the flowers so that you have grown ones to replace the ones that get taken out of the garden.
Advice from Fellow Gardeners
a Google blog search on aphid entries
- Attack of the Aphids | Cracked Window
- An attack of aphids ruins a backyard broccoli crop. A counter attack with store-bought lady bugs brings carnage. But revenge is an empty harvest.
- Soybean aphid control without insecticides? | Science Buzz
- Using Binodoxys communis against soybean aphids: Researchers look for mummies, the darker brown objects on the soybean leaf shown above, to gage the effectiveness of the beneficial insect in controlling soybean aphids. ...
- Playing in the Dirt ยป Attack of the aphids!
- Fortunately these little buggers don't seem to be bothering any of the other plants in the garden, so I've decided to view the honeysuckle as a sort of aphid trap, for now. Several years ago I had a similar issue with aphids attacking ...
- The Best American Poetry: Greg Santos presents "Aphids" by Jason ...
- Jason Camlot's poem ?Aphids? exemplifies his playfulness with language and his sharp wit. Every line is funny. Camlot takes well-known aphorisms, turns them on their head, and makes you think of habitual language in a new light.
Check Your Local Gardening Conditions
How do you deal with Aphids in your garden?
dannystaple wrote...
I had aphids once, and tried to feed them to a sundew plant. BAD MOVE. The sundew - a carnivorous plant, has sticky tentacles on the leaves, which track insects, curl around them, and start digesting them. However, the aphids (which were killing my parsley at the time) took over! They actually killed the sundew. It took a combination of quarantining infected plants, pulling the creatures off them, spraying with a strong water spray and other things to get rid of them. I documented my exploits on my Plant Pest Control lens.
Posted April 07, 2009
Euryale wrote...
in reply to PinkStripedTiger Break off a small piece of the plant that has the bugs on it, put it into a ziploc baggie and seal it shut, then take that sample to your local garden center. They should be able to tell you what insect pest it is and offer an appropriate remedy.
Posted November 27, 2008
PinkStripedTiger wrote
I would like to know what is on my Hen-and-chicks plant. It has these white bugs on it that look like they are not moving at all with lots of legs. I would like to know how to get rid of them.
Posted November 26, 2008
EverythingMouse wrote...
I am really just starting to become serious about gardening as I want to create an organic vegetable garden. Squidoo is my main resource for help and I am glad that I found this lens.
You have been Blessed by a Squid Angel
Posted September 09, 2008
enslavedbyfaeries wrote...
Oh, I'm so glad to see the close up picture of an aphid. I have been trying to explain to my girls what they look like and never got around to looking it up. They brought some roses home from a neighbors yard for a pretty arrangement on our kitchen table... a few of my houseplants have suffered the consequences.
Welcome to the Going Buggy group!
Posted July 18, 2008
by Euryale
In myth, Euryale was an immortal Gorgon. I'm a gardener and Giant Squid, growing things via Lenses. I have a wide range of interests including playing...
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