Controlling The Attack Of The 50 Foot Aphids!

Well if I am honest I don’t think they quite reached the heady heights of 50 feet tall. After all that would be a substantially tall aphid right? As a headline it just sounds far grandiose than reporting on their true height which would be somewhere in the vicinity of about 1mm. Lets face it ‘Attack Of the 50 Foot Aphids’ sounds a little more impressive than ‘Attack Of Something That You Can Barely See’. Anyway after digesting that….

Just after moving in, I noticed a new stem on one of the flowers in the garden was covered in a plague of aphids! Little buggers! They were happily chomping away and breeding on the plant. According to Wikipedia, aphids ‘are among the most destructive insect pests on cultivated plants in temperate regions’. It’s lucky then that we live in the UK, which is about as temperate as a walk in fridge at your local bottlo that keeps your slabs sitting pretty at about 4 degrees Celsius! Well to be fair this mid-year season London has had almost no rain at all and has had what some people, who are familiar with them, call a summer. It has actually been rather glorious and closer to temperate than the typically Icelandic summers we have had these previous 3 years. That is if Icelandic summers are famous for endless rain? Actually I don’t think they are but it still makes a point even if it is an incorrect one. With this in mind there actually was a chance for these flipping aphids to consume all new growth in the garden!

I looked about for various solutions to getting rid of them. Some of them were rather basic i.e. using your fingers to brush them off the plant and squash them, but I was not actually convinced that this would work. Sure it would get rid of them but it would take a good old while! I also didn’t really want to use chemicals to get rid of them as that seemed a little too drastic to deal with what at the time was a rather small outbreak.

Instead I kept on reading and found out that a simple mix of a teaspoon of common dishwashing soap in a litre of lukewarm water might provide a solution. Simply mix up in a pressurised spray bottle and spray on the aphid infestation. Some recipes for aphid mass murder also call for the introduction of a teaspoon of vegetable oil, but I didn’t really think a mixture of soapy salad dressing would cut the mustard so I went for the basic dishwashing liquid and water mix.

I bought myself a pressurised spray container which I must add is very cool! Once filled with aphid murdering soapy water simply pump 4 or 5 times and pull the trigger. Out comes a continual mist of aphid death spray. Sounds a bit ominous I know but essentially that is exactly what it is.

So apparently aphids breathe through their skin and the soapy water clogs their pores such that they are unable to breath and choke in a rather painless death. Apparently they don’t have pain receptors, or some other such biological issue, so they are unable to feel their impending doom. This sort of made me feel a little better, but I wonder if this is simply said amongst wiser gardening circles in order to keep us idiots feeling happy about ourselves ;-).

The solution is actually very effective. One good dose of the soapy water seems to control your average outbreak. Due to the success of the remedy as yet I have been unable to clarify if the aphids felt anything on their way out. They have always departed prior to me getting back to ask.

So if you have what could only be described as aphid issues, a solution to your problem could be the old dishwashing liquid and lukewarm water trick. Although I wouldn’t gamble the house on it, it worked for me ;-). Given the ease of the solution, makes sense to wander around the garden periodically, looking at the undersides of the new growth in order to nip the broblem in the bud as well. Sorry to the aphids. I guess if you were 50 feet tall I might not pick on you as much. Imagine that though 50 foot aphids! Wow that’s tall. Very tall indeed….

See ya.

m