Concerning Aphids

One of the things that makes gardening in the San Francisco Bay Area so amazing is the lack of a “true” winter. In most areas, we don’t get those deep freezes that kill so many vegetables–and all those nasty bugs. This temperate climate lets many invasive pests survive the winter and breed. One nasty bugaboo that haunted my dreams in my first few years gardening here were aphids.
They were gross-looking. (See image above)
They were sticky and hard to get off my plants.
They liked all the same plants as I did, like kale and tomatoes.
They teamed up with the ants to make it even harder to get rid of them.
Jerks!
I tried all the recommended remedies:
…and the kids like to take a nap in a tomato-leaf hammock after a snack:
I will say that the one thing I still haven’t solved in regards to aphids is a better way to get them off the underside of kale leaves than scraping them off with my fingers (*shudder*). I guess that helps “massage” the kale, though, right?
- Spraying them off my plants with water (didn’t work)
- Squishing them by hand (disgusting, and they just came right back)
- Buying and releasing ladybugs (worked for the few that stayed, but most left the yard right away, even after doing the release the “right” way)
- The aphids seemed to only infest one or two plants of any crop
- The plants that were not heavily infested did pretty well
- Some plants (like tomatoes) didn’t seem to be affected by them

