Tuesday 22 April 2008

Aphid Problems.

All readings are taken from a sheltered location in our
garden and cover a 24 hour period starting at 6pm.
Low Temp: 3.7C
High Temp: 19.4C
Rainfall: 0.3mm
Strongest Gust of wind: 1.4 mph
Weather Today: Mostly bright and much warmer,
in fact its been the warmest day of this year.


Did I hear Monty (Don) say on Gardens World the other night that Aphids are not a problem as rarely do they kill anything. Well anyway whether I did hear that or dreamt it, it doens't really matter as I can still show you the effects Aphids have on young seedlings. You could be forgiven for thinking that the seedlings you see on the right in the picture are older than the ones on the left when actually the reverse is true. The tray of seedlings on the left are some three weeks older than the ones on the right, the difference being that the ones on the left have had a persistant Aphid problem. The ones you see are some of the better plants, I've had to throw many away as a result of trying to cure the problem by natural means, none of which worked for me. So today I got violent and gave them a jolly good spraying, lets see how they like that.


So if you have seedlings that aren't doing well and their leaves look distorted check for Aphids, don't expect to find big juicy ones though because they seem to be able to scale themselves to fit the plants they're on, you may even need a magnifying glass to see them.

Bob

1 comment:

Matron said...

Absolutely! three cheers for Bob! give them a good spray. I spoke to a gardener at the RHS Wisley a while ago and she told me that the cucumber mosaic virus is actually spread by aphids!