March 6, 2017

It could be said if you don’t have aphids in your garden you are very lucky or have not been gardening very long. Gardening and aphids go hand in hand. They can very quickly wear out their welcome if they ever were welcome.

Female aphids are born pregnant and are soon ready to give birth to the next generation, which are also born pregnant. Each of these females can produce 5 offspring a day for 20 days, all without ever a male entering the picture. Once the population gets too dense, wings are developed and a new colony is ready to start. Also aphids are farmed by ants to harvest the honeydew that aphids produce. The ants will move the aphids around.

A little factoid from Good Deals .com

Cabbage Aphids - Ever noticed aphids on your vegetable plants? Aphids are the fastest reproducers of the insect world.  Each female will have approximately 41 offspring in her lifetime. During the summer (April through October) there can be as many as 16 generations of aphids. Assuming that all of the aphids lived and reproduced normally, that adds up to be 1,560,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 aphids in one season.

Aphids are the one drawback of using agriculture fabric. It creates a perfect habitat for aphids.

All is not lost! One good thing about fabric it does have the ability of “corralling” beneficial insects that are released underneath the covers. Most folks think of lady beetles as the “cat’s meow” for beneficial insects. There is a small (aphidius) wasp that actually smokes lady beetles, and can be quite effective in low populations of aphids.

These wasps will seek out individual aphids and lay an egg in the aphid. Shortly the aphid is paralyzed and a cocoon covers the aphid then it appears as a little ball attached to the bottom of the leaf. These soon hatch and continue the predation of aphids.

I remember a winter or so back where one week I thought I was going to have to spray for aphids and the next week they were gone!!! They can be rather quick to control aphid populations. They had arrived on their own. These wasps can be purchased over the net too.

Usually if the beds are covered, just uncovering for a day or two will allow beneficial insects to have access. Even house sparrows will clean up the plants. Uncovering for me has another drawback. We have guinea fowl and they will fly over the fence for chance to “browse” on the greens. They can in short order wreak havoc. So I usually keep them covered and use cold pressed neem. After a couple of applications a week apart, they are cleaned up.

Most of the time after harvesting I have to wash the greens to remove the rest of the aphids, a little vinegar to the wash water and the aphids will easily release.

Like with organic gardening a few bites out of leaves or even a few Aphids could easily  called a “proof of purchase”  and that the veggies are safe to eat.