Red Aphids - Best Water and Soap Mixture to Kill Them

[Lindsaylew82]

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.

[applestar]

Here is a picture of them:



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).

[rainbowgardener]

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.

[rainbowgardener]

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.