Extreme Aphids Attack? Time To Go Ladybug Hunting !

in gardening •  6 years ago 

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Even though you can get ahead of the pests in your garden, there is no beating the ants in finding the perfect place to deliver their aphids of different colors.

The cherry plants in my garden also had miscarriages like my Calamunding. All of the flowers just withered and fell and am not sure whether it was because of the lack of pollinators since the weather was not really perfect for the bees to fly the week most of them bloomed or is it because of the extreme black aphids attack they're going through till atm.

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I didn't bother removing them anymore since the ants just deliver a new ones the next day as if they're laughing at me for planting Marigolds around the cherry trees to no avail. No amount of squirting them water from the hose would wash them off any stem, you'd just find twice as much of them the next day.

They've also found their way to the greenhouse and their cohorts are now plaguing not just the sprouts but the very stems of the flowers and the baby fruit of my strawberry plants.

That would bring a very small, deformed harvest or worse - browning of the baby fruits so it was time to go ladybug hunting!

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The first day it got above 25 degree Celcius sunny after a week of gloom, I had to take my 7 year old used and poked on the lid - ice cream container(yes, I've been doing it a long time) which I've been using to do some ladybug hunting. It's small and I could just stuff it in my pocket while I go around ladybug - napping.

They're always hanging around the mere on sting nettles and this plant. I don't know what that is but it looks like this. Both grow much in the mere and on sunny days, specially on consecutive sunny days, you'll get lucky to find them.

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It was the first sunny day after the gloom so I wasn't really sure, I'd find a lot. I only need a few anyway, cause I already have found several of their larva crawling on the apple trees which the ants also plagued with so I just moved 1/3 of them in my greenhouse. They aren't much so I had to go on ladybug hunting.

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I don't normally meddle with nature, it's best to let them be but I also didn't grow my strawberries for the ants so I have to choose between the aphids and a good fruit for the future. I found a few hanging on some of that plants with the white flowers first but I didn't take all of them.

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Think - BALANCE. They're there for a reason, so if I find a group hanging out on three or four plants near each other, I'd take just one - just ONE please and carefully, brush them in the container. If you find one on a plant on a certain place, it's possible that there's plenty of them around that very same place so I kept walking.

I found most of them on the plant with white flowers and am quite surprise that the nettles got none though I don't see any aphids on them as well. I found plenty of them on several spots and it was just one mere so I think I got lucky that the coots and the ducks haven't gotten to them, yet.

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At the end of the mere, I found a group and a couple having coitus so I bug-napped them and left the rest alone and went on my way home. Btw, before you open the lid of your container, lightly tap the lid so all of them falls off the bottom to make sure you won't smash any and so none of them could fly away before you put any other new bug in your container.

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When I got home, I counted 9 in there. They're all very restless but that's normal so to help them chill and become less stressed out, refrigerate the container. Leave it till dusk. You would think they died but not really, they'll all go on hibernate mode and nap.

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I went out to make sure my greenhouse was frog free and close it all day to also make sure none gets to sneak back in while I go on with my daily chores in the house.

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When there's almost no light, water your plants and make sure they're soaking wet before you let your refrigerated sleeping lady bugs out. I had to take mine earlier and risk the chance of keeping just a few the next day but it's alright. If they escape my greenhouse, they'd find their way to the neighbors' plants which probably also need them. I just hope that the couple stays in there though cause am hoping she'd lay her eggs in there.

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Once you take the container out of the fridge, they'd still be sluggish but some wake up faster than the others so don't open it till you get into your greenhouse and don't forget to close the door behind you as well.

If you're just putting them in your garden, make sure it's pitch black around you before you go soaking their plant destination and letting them out.

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Carefully, I've set the ones that are still asleep on the leaves I want them to be in and just let the ones that are already up and about fly away. Then I left them in there to do their job.

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The next day, out of 9, five has found their way out through the slightly opened window but most of the aphids seem absent on the plants, too. I suppose they have done much chewing till it turned pitch black the night before.

I don't normally meddle with nature but I'm glad that I did cause a week later, the grass has been cut in the middle of the road and that means, the ones on the side of the mere would be next and I woke up to that scene in front of our house one morning.

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Somehow, I wonder whether it would have been better to have collected all of the lady bugs I saw on that mere that day but then again, I didn't really know the schedule for cutting the grasses. I hope much of them have managed to escape with the sound of that noisy mower but surely, much lady bugs and butterfly eggs have been severed that day and we question why there's less bugs around us. Sighs and more sighs.

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You? Do you also meddle between your plants and their pests? How? I'd like to know but please only share it with me if you're doing it organically. Thank you.

This content's 100% mine . I took some of the pics with my D Eye and some with my smartphone .. Right click on the pic to open it on a new tab.



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Thank you for this lovely post @englishtchrivy.

Lovely interesting notes about ladybirds.......a garden favourite.

Collecting them is such a good idea. ^__^

Your photographs are top notch.

Cheers.

thanks much mon ami!
I hope they find their way in your garden, too!

If I could buy them like we could buy honeybees here I would but no one sells ladybugs here maybe I should start doing that :D
but then am going to need a swarm to make such a huge egg production and I will have to have plants that ants love and ants themselves

as you know, the damn ants are also absent when cold like today
no aphids delivery hahaha oh well, on the other hand, the ladybugs don't eat on cold days either.. seems like it, even the larva in the greenhouse seem to be just hanging out on the same nook for the past two days.

Anyway, I hope you're being amused with you know what !

xox!

I do landscaping for a living and in spring when i rake there is thousands of ladybugs crawling out as i rake, i gather them in tubs with holespoked and put them in my cold room in the basement till my gardens ready and just release a handful every couple days, keeps aphids and spider mites away for the most part.

that's interesting, so you mean they stayed under the leaves?

Thats what they do here in the canadian prairies in fall they burrow under the leaves into the grass. and in spring emmerge.

those aphids look disgusting. don't feel sorry for them at all.

they do
specially when you squish 'em on your fingers
eeeeeekkkkk!!!

Don't know much about gardening, but the macro photos are great! Love the one with the two ladybugs best. Spectacular.

thank you
lol, that's not even sharp
I should have not zoomed it ;)
but thank you anyway

But I like it anyway. Sue me ;-)

That is interesting to see how busy you are with your garden and greenhouse,there is not only easy job just planting and then collecting nice fruits but there is another side of the wild life who also hungry and want to eat. The pictures you did are really good, I have never see such little insects so close. Hope your hard work will repay and good luck!

thank you

This post has received a 5.83 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @englishtchrivy.

Wow... those are many small ladybirds? lucky you, I only got a jumping spider on Thursday last week.

yes, they're a lot here
am not sure where they are these days though
I see plenty of them in my veggie garden though
and some in my backyard but the sides of the mere are rather weedless nowadays so no signs of them there

I wish I had photography skills as good as yours :) Also I love the ladybugs, they are so beautiful!

What a great post Ivy! I join into your sighs! In all of this "everything has to look nice and orderly" mankind as forgotten nature :-) The tip with putting the ladybugs into the refridgerator is perfect! We had a case of aphids in the willow-tippi in kindergarden this spring and since I am responsible for all of the gardening there, my response was "we are not spraying anything, we just call the lady bugs to lay their eggs :-) It worked perfectly well and now the willow is prospering just fine... And I will have to make sure to arrange the next layer of the tippi structure, haha :-)

In those over 20 years of gardening organically I have learned that less is more all the time. And that it is worth to listen to nature before our human trained brain stepps into action - and to interact instead of battling :-) Perfect post of yours and I adore your macro-photos!!!

Have a wunderfull weekend and Cheers from the Seven Mountains in Germany

thank you !

am always glad to find someone who practices organic system
am glad they listened to you about not spraying
it's not necessary, nature has its own disciplinary system
if we let it be and meddle a bit to help but then organically, it's also enough

you, too have a great weekend
and enjoy nature while gardening :)

You have recieved a free upvote from minnowpond, Send 0.1 -> 2 SBD with your post url as the memo to recieve an upvote from up to 100 accounts!

thank you

Pictures of very beautiful insect spider, To be honest, you have done a lot of great work. I like it very much. Thank you a lot of friends. @englishtchrivy

thank you
they're not spiders though I suggest you also read
the title itself would tell you what those are

time to hunt for the lady that is causing this bug ;p

Ah ladybugs, thankfully what are there to protect our garden aphids!

Well I have really refrigerated any of the insects I suppose ;)

While you did what you had to do and the result did came out pretty good though ;) I have never tried to meddle with insects of the plants as I have a little less expertise in that matter ;)

While to say about the pictures you did take them very nicely.

lol, it's just for hours and my fridge is probably just 7 degrees
they even survive months of winter

just kidding ;)

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informative and interesting!

I got rid of insects in the ground with ash. I was sorry for them, but they were killing my avocados ..

After your photos with strawberries i will never eat them straight from the garden bed without washing anymore 🙄😓😓. I hope I haven't eaten any of these little bugs 😁😂😂.

When i was a kid i always collected these cute red ladybirds and and brought them home. In the evening, there was a true festival of beetles in my room 😁😂😂😂

Very good post.
My grandmother in the garden, too, has problems with the attack of beetles and the background.
I often see this beetle but do not know its name?

its not a pest
if you let it be
it will help you get rid of pests
it's not a beetle
I wrote it up there its the larva or the "caterpillar" version of the ladybug
they mostly teach us about the caterpillar so the ladybug's larva or "worm form" is not known to the many