APHIDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hi everyone!
I planted all of my little plantlings this past Sunday . I live in Hampton Roads, Va. so it's warm enough to plant but apparently warm enough for bugs as well!
I just looked at my 3 little Kale plants and they have teeny tiny itsy bitsly oval white almost microscopic bugs. LOL! I only ASSUME they are aphids. Besides lady bugs (too early) what can I use on my baby kale?

Thanks@

cindy

sounds silly but put your water hose nozzle on a heavy mist and spray the lil bugs off the underside of the leaves...there's also insecticidal soap and neem oil if the water sprayer doesn't help.

I will try that! I do have some cayenne pepper and castile soap but it didn't work last year. I will try some neem oil, though.

THANKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Last year I put dish soap in a sprayer bottle (not much soap) and sprayed them. Worked well - I only had to spary them once!

The aphids I've always seen were pale green, not white. Use Google Images if you want to make sure it's aphids.

Here we're over run with ladybugs. They're the non native asian type and they get in the house during the winter. We had tons of them in the garage and basement. I don't mind because last year I grew some peppers in containers. One day I was checking out the plants and noticed aphids. I was going to get some insecticidal soap, but 2 days later when I looked at the pepper plants again there were no aphids! None! Thank you lady bugs! Now I am happy to help them over winter in the garage. I've already seen a few out in the garden this spring.

My milkweed gets infected with aphids and I also use the dish soap sprayer method. It works very well, but I do have to re-apply. Squishing the orange eggs is very satisfactory, too. =)

If you're not sure what you have this is a good link
http://entowww.tamu.edu/imagegallery/
You can identify the insect by a photo, then click on the photo to learn more about it.

Neem Oil best organic pest kill i have found aside from natures deffense. Bought a 2 gallon sprayer from lowes $5 and a 16 oz bottle of Neem oil from Ace hardware last season 2 cap fulls to to gallons of water and spray away. My reason for getting it in the firs tplace is i had Leaf Miners going insane on my tomatoe plants 4 insecticides later i found this stuff and have not turned back to chemicals since best of luck in your pest deffense

Thanks everyone! It just so happens that I do have some Neem oil. I will try it this weekend. Here is a picture of the little teeny thing:

Happy Friday!!!

I just sprayed some Neem oil and water solution on my kale. Some of them had quite a few aphids but some had only one or two. I'll let you know how it works!
Thanks to all of you for responding!

When 8 years ago I planted rose bush, it was heavily attacked by aphids. Next year I planted a few garlic plants around the rose bush and I haven't had any aphids on my rose since (garlic comes back every year, some years I remove some of it). I have aphids on other plants (with no garlic next to them), but seems that garlic works for my rose bush very well.

Oh Jola! Where did you find the garlic??? I have looked everywhere I know to look here in Va Beach but I can't find garlic to grow. Anyone have any for sale?? I would love to grow some.

there are alot of areas to get garlic from maybe not local but a google (your best friend) search will have a bunch of websites to go to for information on growing and where to get seed cloves (i think thats what they are called) pirces vary from site to site as do shipping charges so shop carefully and good luck

I used the same garlic I use for cooking! I just pulled it apart and planted cloves.

LOL!!!!! I woulda never thunk it! I most certainly will plant some tomorrow! HAHAHA!!
Thanks, Jola!

I just pulled about 5 1-gallon bags of lettuce (probably about 12 "romain hearts" worth of lettuce" from my "romaine but spreads out like buttercrunch" lettuce. The picture below is about 3 weeks old, and we've been taking leaves off of the 10 plants (2 died from curious animals or wind-twisting, shrug) About a week go they all started looking like actual romaine lettuce, the tall tight clumps of leaves (vs the spread-out style below). I got busy building a pool deck, and didn't spend a lot of time at the beds for the past couple of days, and yesterday evening when I did... I could see the ants moving around on the plants and I knew they were tending their aphids.

I pulled a whole adult-sized armful, which reduced the amount of leaf space by a little over half. Got to see one ladybug carcass and one live spider (go arachnid! eat 'em, eat 'em!).

Got the lettuce inside, and filled the sink with water and a large amount of salt - soaking the leaves made them a bit limp, but it kills the aphids (and the 2 ants that were slow to get off) and their babies. Swishing them around a bit (after a 30-second soak) usually washed the aphids off too, but I still hand-inspected.

Yeah, they're protein/carbs... but I don't eat them. Plus, the kids and wife wouldn't want to eat bugs.


Oh - the lettuce was planted as 3" starter plants in 1st week of April, and this pic is from about 4 weeks later. Plant them in straight compost, hand-water (almost) daily, and they got full sunlight. [At least they did - the brocolli next to them is trying to shade them. It's a forest!!]


I'm headed to the store this weekend to get some organic pesticides. Probably Neem Oil.

Wow Brian! They look delicious!!!!!! I planted head lettuce and it's so warm here that they are growing a bit slowly. I planted in April. I suppose I could take some of the leaves and use them.

Cindyroo - This is a super newbie question, but is the picture you posted of the heart shaped flower with the bug on it kale? My 4 year old gave me one of these plants as a mother's day gift that he grew in preschool and I have been trying to figure out what it was. That picture is exactly it!

Tiffany

AHHH! He brought you a kale plant! Yes, that is kale! LOL! If you live in a hot climate, I would suggest keeping it indoors but in the sun. I am getting ready to pick my kale even though it is not full because it is soooo dang hot here in Va. Beach.

Any feedback from you pros would be nice for me and Tiffany!

That is just too cute, Tiffany!

cindy - also a newbie