there are a TON of aphids that hatched, waiting to be eaten by ladybugs, squished, drowned... whatever manner works the best!!! was doing well for awhile, but always suspected this was going to be a buggy year, lack of cold winter combined with wet spring... mmmm buggy season!!! my poor little greenhouse plants got swarmed, i think i've gotten rid of most of them but they are now sitting in my basil... grrrrr...
i found a website ( Ramona's Basil Garden Love your Basil ) a few months ago and received an email with a recipe for 'possible removal' of aphids using a lemon juice cocktail ( 1 lemon to 3 cups water )
Ramona has a video clip of how to make the spray... am going to make some today and give my basil a good go with it... wish me luck!!!
unfortunately the aphids have attacked one of my apple trees too... with great gusto they've mulitplied and are causing the poor little tree great stress... yesterday i was inspecting the leaves and was horrified to find....... apple tent caterpillars.... babies but hundreds of them... out came the clippers and off with the branches that were hosting the hungry little critters... as much as i hated to interfer with nature.. they are now in a very large bucket of water... hopefully all have all gone to buggy heaven....
i have my fingers crossed and will be watching closely to see if any more of the dreaded critters hatch... 'they' have predicted a tent caterpiller year because of last winter's mildness.. guess we'll see... this will be the first year that this little tree has had more than 3 apples on it.. i may end up removing the apples so the tree can heal itself... i only have 2 apple trees, both Gravenstein , in my opinion, one of the best varieties of apples..when i think of Gravenstein i think of Grandma's big old apple tree that was in the front yard, down by the river... ahhhh fond memories...
Posts
4 comments:
Oh, you poor thing! We had some (gratefully) cold snaps this winter, but DID have a very unusually protracted and wet spring, so we'll see what happens in the bug department... Good luck!
I bagged my growing apples yesterday to deter worms on them. There's a post on my blog a few weeks back that shows how to do it. We, too, had a mild winter ... but it's the lack of honey bees I'm noticing this year. I've only seen bumble bees ... Last year we had so many honey bees ... hoping they have not had a colony collapse issue in our area. I hope your lemon spray works.
We have a lot of little caterpillars in our gardens this year that we normally do not have but so far no tent caterpillars...fingers tightly crossed.
We also have aphids, but then they grace us with their presence every year. I will keep your anti-aphid concoction in mind.
biobabbler, those cold snaps are probaby going to be a blessing!
Mrs.Mac: i'll have to check your posting on bagging apples... we had a lot of honey bees earlier in the spring, but of late, i'm only seeing the wild bees..i'm hoping that it's just that our neighbour has moved the hives up the mountain...
Mr.H: i hope that your aphids stay at a dull roar.. after all they are food for others ;) and hopefully no tent caterpillars will arrive :D
Post a Comment