How to Eliminate Aphids: Top Tips for a Thriving Garden
- mp50081
- May 8, 2024
- 3 min read
When you have a garden, you're going to have to deal with pests.
A pest is any living creature that causes harm to humans. It can be an unwanted plant, rodent, deer or even an insect.
One pest called an aphid can be found in your garden is not only harmful to your garden, but also very annoying.
What Are Aphids?
Aphids are small pear-shaped insects. They range in size from 1/16 to 1/8 of an inch long. Aphids can be green, black, red, yellow, brown or even gray.
Mature aphids can be wingless or can have wings.
Aphids are sap-suckers, that means they have piercing sucking mouthparts used to feed on plant sap.
When aphids suck on plant sap, they cause damage to a plant by discoloration, leaf curling as well as yellowing.
Aphids are a major nuiscence to every gardener because they asexually reproduce at a fast rate and can be very hard to manage. Also they excrete a sugary honeydew that attracts ants.
Ants end up protecting aphids by brutally warding off natural predators such as ladybugs. Ants do that in order to protect the honeydew they like to eat.
Aphids are annoying and destructive, many questions come up about the best way to control them.
How Do You Get Rid Of Aphids?
There are many ways to get rid of aphids. It's recommended that organic methods are used instead of toxic pesticides.
Why you shouldn't use pesticides?
Pesticides have been widely used by farmers since the 1940's as a poweful tool for killing pest including aphids.
Any other kind of pest management was cast off to the side in favor of pesticides. Overtime, the same pests that were killed using pesticides evolved to become immune to them.
Once pests became immune to one pesticide, another more toxic one was developed. Then overtime, those same pests became immune to the more toxic pesticide.
Also pesticides create another problem, they end up killing off beneficial insects that are natural enemies of aphids.
Here are some tips for getting rid of aphids organically!
1. Start With Some Simple Solutions:
A simple solution for getting rid of aphids is to spray them off with a strong stream of water.
All you need is a garden hose and an adjustible nozzle that allows you to adjust the water pressure.
Another simple solution is to remove plants that are infested with aphids. If they're infesting part of the plant, then that part can be removed.
If there are only a handful of aphids on a plant, you can crush them with your fingers.
2. Attracting Natural Predators:
Aphids have a lot of natural enemies that eat them as prey.
These predators include green and brown lacewings, lady bugs, hover flies, damsel flies as well as blister beetles.
By attracting these predators to your garden, you’re helping to control the aphid population naturally.
By adding plants to your garden with small flat open flowers such as alyssum, dill, yarrow, sunflowers as well as marigolds, you’ll attract those predators.
3. Use Insecticidal Soap:
What is insecticidal soap?
Insecticidal soap is a mixture of water and potassium salts of fatty acids.
It’s used on indoor and outdoor plants to curb aphids and other soft-bodied insects.
Insecticidal soap normally doesn’t harm plants. It only kills on contact, meaning that it’s safe for friendly insects that might come into your garden after the soap dries.
Remember! Household soap or dish soap like Dawn dish detergent is not insecticidal soap.
Using dish soap can harm your plants!
4. Repel Aphids With Companion Plants:
Companion plants are not just used to attract predators that eat aphids, they can also repel them.
Plants such as marigolds attracts not only ladybugs, but also pollinators including bees to your garden.
They also play a role in driving away all kinds of pests. Marigolds have a scent that keeps aphids away.
Another companion plant that can be used is catnip. Even though it’s best known for attracting cats to your garden, it also has a way to repel aphids.
5. Keep Your Plants Healthy:
Aphids can become a problem when your plants are under stress.
Plants can be under stress because of drought, poor soil or even overcrowding. Also, if plants are not getting adequate nutrients, aren’t receiving enough water or enough light, aphids can get out of control.
By improving poor soil, providing adequate nutrients, providing enough water and even improving light intake, your plants will become stronger and healthier. As a result, the risk of aphid infestation decreases naturally
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