Aphid battles

I've had aphids in the garden before, but nothing like this year. I lost four broccoli and two Brussels sprouts plants over the holidays to these little beasts.

The tell-tale sign is that chlorotic look to the lower leaves, but as the aphids take over the whole plant will soon look like that. To the uneducated eye it may look like the plant needs fertilizer, especially when the plants are small. But turning over the leaves shows the true culprit.

Aphids literally suck the life out of the plant. As the lower leaves die they move up the plant to the next one.

One of the challenges in controlling aphids is that there really aren't any chemicals that are effective against them. Even if there was, it needs to get sprayed up under the leaves, so dusting isn't effective either.

Soapy water is one available control tool. As soft-bodied insects aphids don't have much protection from the elements. Soapy water basically smothers them. Unfortunately, soapy water can also harm the plant. The strategy is to spray with soapy water, wait a few hours, and then spray the plant with the garden hose. Sure, I could just spray with the garden hose too, but all that does is knock the aphids off the plant and into the soil where they could crawl back onto the plant again.

A squirt of liquid dish soap and some water go into the pump sprayer. I don't have a specific ratio, other than the concoction needs to be able to go through the sprayer easily but the stuff coming out feels soapy. (I keep a bottle of Ivory in the barn, fairly gentle for cleaning sensitive areas on the horses but tough enough for scrubbing bird feeders.)

As I start spraying the plants I want to make sure I hit both sides of the leaves. The goal is to smother the aphids.

If you see some suds, that's OK. In fact, that's a sign that you have a good ratio of soap and water. I'm going to rinse off the plant in a little while anyway.

 After a few hours the aphids are still on the underside of the leaves, but they don't look happy. A lot of them have already shriveled up. Next step is to break out the spray nozzle on the garden hose to blast away the soap residue and aphids.

After blasting each leaf I'll come back and give the whole plant a good spray with the nozzle. I want to make sure I get the stems too, in case there are any aphid hiding there.

I'm not quite out of the woods yet. I may have to repeat this a few more times this week. These are the worst of the lot. We'll see...