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McKinney88
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Red Aphids - Best Water and Soap Mixture to Kill Them

All of my tomato plants but one have curled up all their leaves. This happened sometime last week while I was on vacation. At first I chalked it up to the hot weather we had been having and causing stress on the plants. This morning I was walking around looking and thought I noticed a small bug on the stem of the plant. I started looking under leaves and such and found these little red bugs. Some where bigger than others so I assume that there is is some eggs too.

I read up on the soap and water solution you can make at home but I found different recipes. What do yall use for this? One website said a teaspoon of dish soap per gallon of water and the almanac website had these two mixes:

- Stir together 1 quart of water, 1 tsp of liquid dish soap and a pinch of cayenne pepper. Do not dilute before spraying on plants.

- In a spray bottle combine 2 parts rubbing alcohol, 5 parts water, and 1 tablespoon liquid soap.

Not sure what to use. Also once the aphids are gone, will the leaves return to normal? How often do I need to apply this mixture? :?:

Juliuskitty
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I am just going to tell you what I learned and what I have used successfully for years. If you use dish soap, or other detergent, it washes the plants own natural waxes off their leaves. I learned this in Master Gardener classes which I am currently attending. They say to use a true soap, such as Ivory, or Fells Naptha, or baby shampoo. I found Ivory liquid soap, which is OK too. One tablespoon per gallon H2O. Make sure you only do this spray early am, or late afternoon, because those droplets on the leaf act like little prisms and magnify the sunlight, and those leaves will fry. Leave on for ~45 minutes after a thorough spraying under, over the leaves, and stem too. Then rinse the plant off to get the soap off. Repeat every 4 days for 3 times, that should take care of any newly hatched ones.
I know this will cure the problem, it always has for me. Cayenne is absolutely unnecessary, I would leave it out, it can burn the plant and forming fruit too.
BTW-some just get rid of their aphids by doing a power water only spray, it will flush them off. I have done this and it does work, but they were soon back. Some buy ladybugs and lacewings and release them, which also works very well. They leave when their food is all eaten though.:roll:

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McKinney88
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Baby shampoo? Lucky for me I have 6 month old twins lol. We have a small thing of Johndons no more tears baby shampoo. I will try it.

imafan26
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There aren't many red aphids around but if you have bronzing on the underside of the leaf and you tap the leaf onto a sheet of white pepper and see what looks like "paprika" moving or see any kind of webbing. You may have two spotted spider mites.

Soap will be marginally effective on them.

Horticultural oil will be better but have to get good coverage under the leaves and if your temperatures exceeed 80 degrees, then if they are in pots you would need to move them into shade for a day or provide shading from them since the oil can burn the plant in high heat.

Spider mites usually make their appearance in the hot dusty days of summer. They cause a stippling and bronzing effect on the leaves with the leaf edges drying from the feeding.

Good news, if they are aphids, horticultural oil will work on them too.

Miticides are better, but hard to find. Bayer makes a mite and insect control product but it is only for use on ornamentals and contains imodicloprid which gives good systemic control but very bad for the bees. Most of the recommended miticides like keltane are nearly impossible to find or restricted.

Sulfur will also work but has similar problems to using horticultural oils, they can burn plants in the heat and they cannot be used within two weeks of each other or they will definitely burn plants

Other controls that has helped.

Water the plants, especially under the leaves. Spider mites can be hosed off. Plants that are not stressed make poorer targets

Baking soda spray 1tablespoon baking soda + 1 Tablespoon insecticidal soap + 1 Tablespoon horticultural oil in 1 gallon of water. Because this contains the oil, use same precautions on hot days.
Baking soda is a dessicant and dries them up.

Good sanitation. Pick up the leaves and remove very infested leaves or weak plants.

Plant nectar and host plants to attract beneficial insects. Predatory mites will be killed by any chemicals used including the homemade ones and the natural predators and cultural practices are the best hope of controlling them in the long run.

I have fennel as my garden workhorse for bug control. It does have to be planted off by itself but it is a trap plant for aphids which will feed the ladybug larvae. The blooms last a long time attracting adult ladybugs, hoverflies, lacewings, and parasitic wasps, and the occasional bee. I can also harvest the finocchio bulbs, leaves and seeds since the aphids don't really bother the fennel. I have alyssum, cuphea, marigolds, seasonally dill and borage, and other flowers that bloom more or less year round providing nectar and four o'clocks for rose beetles.

I am not pest free and I still have to use slug bait as I do not have a toad or a chicken. I do have weevils and stink bugs but I have birds and gecckos that put a dent in that population. Although the birds eat my peppers and seeds and the gecckos like to eat earthworms and ladybugs too.

I still have to use some chemicals. I have to use systemics on the hibiscus to control erineum gall mites but I have stopped using year round systemic control on the roses and the bees are visiting them again. I sometimes need to use systemic rose care on them in the rainy season since I cannot keep up with the fungicides, but it only lasts for 6 weeks and I don't use it year round.


https://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/insect/05507.html

imafan26
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If you use insecticidal soap it is fine. If you are making a homemade soap, then only certain brands were recommended. Detergents are never used to make insecticidal soap solution.

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rainbowgardener
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Agree with soap, not detergent. Dr. Brunners is another pure liquid soap that is available in most drugstores.

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McKinney88
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I just went and bought a bottle of Ivory liquid soap. Made sure not to get ditergat. I will mix it up and try and get it sprayed on this evening. I watched a YouTube video on it and the guy didnt rinse it off.

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McKinney88
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Here is a picture of them:

Image

This plant was covered in them. Way worse than the other ones. I did find one really really big aphid on a sunflower plant so I sprayed everything in my garden but my corn, strawberries, snap peas, and edamame.

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rainbowgardener
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Way too big to be spider mites or russet mites, so we will continue to call them red aphids. There is a potato aphid that is red .

Did the soapy water spray help? You will have to keep doing it once a week or so for awhile as new ones will hatch out. Look in to buying ladybugs to release in your garden. For the future work on planting some of the nectar bearing plants that attract ladybugs and other beneficial insects, like lacewings, hoverflies, aphid mummy wasps, etc. This includes alyssum, milkweed, yarrow, dill, fennel, parsley, marigold, tansy.... Put in some bird feeders to attract birds.

You have an infestation like that because your garden is out of balance, without predators for the aphids. If you get tempted in to treating it with poisons, the out of balance will just get worse, because the insecticides kill all the beneficial ones too.

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McKinney88
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I got up and close with couple of the big ones and they look just like an aphid from pictures I have seen. I was also assuming they are the potato aphid that are red. The soapy water mix does seem to have helped kill a lot of them. I checked yesterday and still saw a few so I was thinking about spraying again this weekend. I guess it will take a few weeks for the plants to recover.

I never have had a lot of lady bugs anyways. I do have a lot of ants on my property though. They are everywhere. I found a pretty good homemade mix using baking soda, powdered sugar, and water to kill them with.

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McKinney88
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Well the aphids are atill around. I spray them, they seem to die and them they all come back. Found a ton today. I think I'm going to order some lady bugs to munch on them. I'm not ready to break down and buy insecticides just yet.

I'm afraid my lone black krim may not make it, already pulled up one plant, but I found one good stem on it, so I plucked and I'm going to try the growing a plant from a cutting thing.

Now my two biggest parks whoppers have a lot of aphids on them with leaves curled up but they are still producing fruit. The black krim has a couple of fruits as well but the plant is sketchy looking. I had two beef steak plants and they seem to have had the worst reaction to the aphids. One is the plant I pulled up and the other looks really bad.

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rainbowgardener
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A lot of times you can just squish the aphids -- they are slow and stupid and just sit there and let you do it. My trumpet honeysuckle usually gets covered with aphids in the spring. I squish them all and they don't come back until the next year. My guess is the dead bodies of their comrades is a warning sign to other ones, but I don't know.

Rairdog
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If they crawl really fast they could predatory mites. I haves them everywhere but they never show signs of plant damage. Make sure they are not feeding on other mites/aphids. I have been watching them and they never stop moving and are very fast.

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McKinney88
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I tell you what these potato aphids are tuff! I had wanted to get some lady bugs but I had also used sevin dust earlier in the year so I was afraid my garden bugs were already out of balance and lady bugs may not fix that (next year I will try and keep it all balanced). I ended up getting some Bayer vegetable & garden insect spray. Mixed it up and sprayed my plants at dusk Saturday night. I got up Sunday and there were still several aphids alive on the plants! These things just wont die.

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rainbowgardener
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Congratulations - you have now embarked on a program of breeding pyrethroid resistant aphids! The ones that survived the spray are the strongest, most resistant ones in the population. You have now eliminated all their competition in their population AND their insect predators, along with honeybees and other beneficial insects in your garden. Now those resistant ones that are left will be free to multiply like crazy and your whole aphid population will be resistant.

I strongly advise you not to spray again, you just continue the process of breeding super bugs. Go out and squish them - it's one thing they can never become resistant to, and which harms nothing else in your garden.

what I said before: If you get tempted in to treating it with poisons, the out of balance will just get worse, because the insecticides kill all the beneficial ones too ... and I should have added you will be breeding resistant bugs.

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Lindsaylew82
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Hi! That plant looks like it has herbicide poisoning. Have you been using weed n feed, or weed b gone? Any weed sprays?
It's also probably why the critters are attacking it so violently. That curly crisp growth at the new growth looks spot on. If so, they probably won't grow out of it. I have 4 that are doing this. One is severe, looks just like yours.

Are you sure you don't have Leaf Footed Bug nymphs? They are red with black legs and the like to congregate like aphids. They are also larger like the ones in your picture. A really good image of them might help.
If you're dead set on spraying something, in addition to the suggestions already given, you could use neem oil.
Hand picking them, or knocking them into a cupful of sudsy water will definitely kill them. Just leave them in the water overnight. If you're squeamish (like me) use tweezers or a pain of hemostats.
In my opinion, hand picking if the MOST effective treatment. You know they're dead.

If it were me, I'd pull that plant, and anything that isn't producing normal leaves. It's diseased and that invites pests. They prey on the weak, and that plant is weak.

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applestar
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McKinney88 wrote:Here is a picture of them:

Image

This plant was covered in them. Way worse than the other ones. I did find one really really big aphid on a sunflower plant so I sprayed everything in my garden but my corn, strawberries, snap peas, and edamame.
You are getting really good advice here. Take heed and review the situation.

"... so I sprayed everything in my garden" is not a good idea. Any spraying should be done on case by case, plant by plant basis or you will kill your Garden Patrol.

-- Ladybug is not the only predators -- spiders, hover flies (looks like very tiny bees), metallic green flies, tiny black wasps called aphid mummy makers that I hardly ever see but know they are there by the brown aphid mummies/husks, green lacewings that I also hardly ever see the adults or the larvae but find their eggs on stalks, rarely seen praying mantids (where did all those newly hatched babies go?), big eyed robber flies that swoop and snatch aphids off the plants on wing.... Sometimes, you will only see signs of their activity and not the actual insects.

I see birds like finches, warblers, kinglets and chickadees congregating on aphid infested plum and locust trees (and sunflowers) too.

If you see an infestation, stop and closely examine to see what else is there before squishing or spraying. There may also be predator eggs or larvae that will be difficult to identify immediately.

Sometimes, mass infestation is limited or clustered on one leaf or shoot and it's faster and more effective to cut and bag -- amputate!

BTW -- that comment that some YouTube video didn't mention rinsing the solution off -- I sometimes wonder how well informed they are before making those videos. I kind of cringe when they say "this is my first garden and I'm going to show you how I did this." If they didn't rinse off and the plants withered, not many...most... are NOT going to make a followup video admitting to it, but the previous video is up and there to stay. Some people don't make the connection between the spray and the subsequent brown spotting which they will call "some kind of disease" (and spray something else).

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rainbowgardener
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By the way, just because it hasn't been mentioned in this thread yet, if you are using synthetic fertilizers, Miracle Gro, 10-10-10 or whatever, you are aggravating the out of balance situation. The concentrated synthetics force a whole bunch of tender new growth, which is then very attractive to and very vulnerable to pests like the aphids.

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rainbowgardener
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There's another interesting little tidbit about this garden balance/ resistant bugs stuff. Applestar mentioned not spraying the whole garden. There's a lot of reasons for that. It turns out you are much better off to leave some safe havens in your garden where the non-resistant aphids can still exist. Maybe have an unsprayed area with some aphid trap crops, like nasturtiums and nettles. By "saving" the non-resistant aphids, you can keep your whole aphid population from becoming resistant and there will still be non resistant ones around for the resistant ones to mate with.

If you spray everything, you wipe out all the non-resistant aphids and are left with only resistant ones.



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