Well it’s been a fun few days at work. The early spring means everyone wants to get a early start on their gardening, even though it’s too early for a lot of the Bay Area usual plants.
And while we had the freak rain it was decently sunny afterwards, so everyone wanted to garden! -I’m fairly tired.
But aphids are tireless, and nature is horrible!
This tomato isn’t even a month in the garden and the little pink bastards are swooping in for a meal. Well. I’m ready for them.
Hand squishing is the prescription for now- soon I’ll get my first can of ladybugs and let my little warriors unleash hell.
I wish it was so easy to combat scale.
Among my recent hauls was a new red stemmed peppermint, possibly my favorite mint of all time. It’s gorgeous and has a smell you could make fine perfume from.
It’s also really scale prone like the last one I had. I took no chances. Any leaves that were too messed up got removed, I scratched off the rest and for two days prior to potting I sprayed the underside of the leaves with horticultural oil.
And since scale can be spread by ants- I sprinkled diatomaceous earth everywhere. I also have a canister of sulfur- another good scale killer.
This and the pink aphids are combat-able.
Unfortunately the grey aphid situation on the bolting brassicas is not really fixable.
Hey want to watch a gross video?
Yeah- the un-tamable explosion of grey aphids is exhibit A as to why I ripped out all the brassicas on the top beds. I’m just 100% done. All those squirming legs Ick!!!
But all is not lost!
The cavalry has arrived!
In between all the ripping out of plants and weeds I counted no fewer then three ladybugs which means the nights are warming up to the point that my favorite little buddies are ready to get their game on and make lovely little babies to eat all my pests.
Ain’t nature grand?
The Neanderthal Gardens 
NASTY!
Homopteran and Hemipteran insects are SO icky! They can get so abundant in cedar and tulip trees that you can hear tires sticking to honeydew on the roadways below.
blech. I have an ok relationship with the pink guys- I can hand squish and spray soap to get them- but the grey guys are SO GROSS. my boss hate them too- we get them on the ornamental kale in winter and he gags when he looks at them and makes me hose them off. One time we got a minor aphid infestation at work on the bonsai starts and our hardgoods buyer who also buys the bonsai just adjusted out some ladybugs and poured them over… it worked!
My niece used to get ladybugs, but I doubted their effectiveness. They so often migrate away immediately after getting released. Apparently, there was enough bad insects to keep them well fed enough to stay and start families.
Its how you release them-
Before nightfall around wet plants, and I’d mist them with water. It’s dark and cold so they’ll huddle up- wake up in your infested plant and think “well this is a nice place to drink water, eat bugs and make babies!”
Ew, so they make babies in the garden. I suppose that is where their larvae come from. . . . but more information than I needed.
Haven’t you ever seen little clusters of yellow eggs underneath a veggie leaf? Those are ladybug eggs!
If I had, I would have ignored them as something that is not a threat. Now that you mention it though, I do remember my niece pointing them out.
Once when I saw them on a plant that was ok, I carefully move the leaf with eggs to an infested plant. It worked!
The larvae are who do all the work anyway. They are hungry!
those beautiful alligator looking bug chompers!