What Are Aphids?

Posted by John on July 8, 2011 No comments

To understand fully how the techniques for getting rid of aphids work and perhaps even develop some of your own aphid removal techniques, it is useful to understand a little about what aphids are.

Aphids are members of the superfamily Aphidoidea in terms of taxonomic rank and are also referred to as plant lice, greenflies, blackflies and whiteflies.

They are thought to have been on the planet for around 280 million years. Around four and a half thousand species are known across ten families and they can be found all over the world (however they are more common in temperate regions).

What Do Aphids Look Like?

The image below shows a collection of aphids (shown to scale) at various stages of life.

  • A: Adult female aphid
  • B: Adult male aphid
  • C: Young female aphid
  • D: Female aphid laying an egg
  • E: Aphid eggs
Aphids in various stages of life

Aphids in various stages of life

They are soft-bodied insects, which means they have no exoskeleton to protect them from predators.

They can be a multitude of different colors including black, brown and orange, however the most common varieties are green.

They have six legs and two antennae as well as a stylet, which they use for feeding. They stylet pierces the leaves or stalk of a plant and allows the aphid to suck the plant’s sap straight out of the phloem and xylem vessels.

Why Are Aphids a Pest?

Because aphids consume the sap of plant life, they can cause untold damage to crops, which has made them the sworn enemy of many farmers and gardeners.

Given the chance, they will suck all the sap from a plant until it is dead – there is no mutualistic symbiotic relationship, they will simply feed until the plant dies.

This has resulted in the human race developing a number of methods for getting rid of aphids including home-made aphid spray and biological control.

Getting Rid of Aphids Using Biological Control

Posted by John on July 6, 2011 1 comment

Hey guys,

Aphids are nasty little creatures that can damage and kill plant life by injecting their feeding tube into the leaves and stalk and sucking out the sap. This has resulted in animosity towards them by many gardeners who have found their crop ruined by the insects. In this post I’m going to discuss howto get rid of aphids using biological control.

What is Biological Control?
Biological control is the process of controlling the population of a species by introducing their natural predators to their environment. A form of biological control is to get a cat if your house has a mouse or rat infestation.

Aphid infestations can be controlled by introducing one (or more) of the following species to your garden and plants:

Ladybugs/Ladybirds
Ladybugs (called ladybirds outside North America) are the most effective biological control for aphids and can quickly wipe out large numbers of them and permanently reduce their population. Typically, a ladybug will eat around 5000 aphids during it’s lifetime of between 1 and 2 years. Both adult ladybugs and ladybug larvae can be use to get rid of aphids.

Parasitic Wasps
Parasitic wasps kill aphids by laying their eggs inside aphid’s bodies. After the egg hatches, the larvae feeds on the aphid’s body until it is dead. When fully-grown, the adult parasitic wasp will then seek out more aphids to inject it’s eggs into.

Lacewing and Hoverfly Larvae
These maggots will joyfully chomp aphids before they undergo metamorphism into adults. Then they will lay their eggs near to aphid populations, which will in turn provide a food source for their own young.


How To Obtain Predators
In order to introduce aphid predators to your garden or greenhouse, you first need to obtain them.

You can do this by collecting them yourself from the wild (you can pick up dozens of ladybirds from a simple walk through the countryside), purchasing them from your local garden store or even attracting them to your garden by growing specific plants – nettles, wallflowers, amaranths and herbs such as parsley, sage and mint are good choices.

Aphid Removal Video

Posted by John on July 5, 2011 2 comments

Hey guys,

Following on from yesterday’s post where I showed you how to create your own insecticide to get rid of aphids, I’d like to share with you this cool video I found on YouTube in which gardener, Jerry Greenfield (yes that is his real name) demonstrates the technique.

As well as the bug spray technique, he also shows another aphid removal technique, which involves blasting the aphids off of plants using the water pressure from a hose.

Jerry has a knack for explaining things in a fun an entertaining way and I’d recommend checking out more of his videos.


TECHNIQUE 1
Now, if the bureaucrats in your neck of the woods haven’t messed up your water pressure, we got a fun way to help get rid of the aphids – it’s kind of like playing a game.

What you do is blast them. You get your hose, get your nozzle and just fire.

[Jerry shoots water on the leaves of his plants to knock the aphids off]

This not only gets the aphids wet, but it pees them off.

TECHNIQUE 2
Now, another way to get rid of your aphids is by using dish washing liquid and water in a spray bottle.

The aphids are sift-bodied critters, so what the soap does is that it covers them and dries them out. And they don’t like that much more than they like the whole spraying with water business.

[Jerry squirts a little dish detergent into a spray bottle filled with water]

So, just a little bit. You don’t have to use this fancy organic soap – any dish washing liquid will do.

We’re gonna shake this all up here and then hope the spray nozzle works.

[Jerry sprays the plants with the solution]

If your gonna use your soap and water mixture, you want to make sure you do that on a cloudy day,like today, or early in the morning because you don’t want to fry your plants.

This is Jerry Greenfield. We’ll see you next time on Survival Garden. Take care now.

Hope you enjoyed the vid.

Until next time,

John