Blackfly

[viques]

Anyone else inundated? Can’t remember it being this bad for a good few years, I suspect they enjoy it wet and windy. I am hanging on for natural predators to sort it out for me but so far I haven’t seen a single ladybird, I am not sure if I can sit on my hands for much longer.

Birds have been pecking a everything today, so hoping they will soon clear them

I've read that if you feed ants with sugar solution, they stop protecting aphids, leaving them open to natural predators. I might try it, I've seen a few ants on my plants

My birds seem to keep the greenfly in check, but not the blackfly so much. I have stopped feeding them (the birds) to encourage them to “eat natural” .

@viques

My birds seem to keep the greenfly in check, but not the blackfly so much. I have stopped feeding them (the birds) to encourage them to “eat natural” .

That might just mean they no longer bother to visit your garden.

A friend of mine used to hang a gird feeder in any bush that was infested by greenfly.

You could tree pinching out heavily infested shoot tips and binning them.

Or squashing them - try to remember they're mostly water.

MereDintoofP the birds are still coming, half of them live in my jasmine and ivy anyway, the rest pop in to use the dust bath and bathing facilities provided!

I might have to start removing the worst of them if mother nature’s little carnivores don’t get a wriggle on. I drop them into a bucket of soapy water rather than the bin, I think they could climb out of a bin.

You could just spray with soapy water. Of course it would also take out any goodies that you hit by mistake.

Well diluted washing up liquid works well, I use it on my runners as the ants always farm them on there. On broad beans I pinch the tips out.

Does all this advice work on greenfly as well? I'm plagued with the little sods at the moment, I've never had so many. I've been rubbing them off my roses with my fingertips (eugh!) but they seem very persistent. I don't want to use a pesticide. I've got a sprayer with a soap solution I've made up but I worry about it damaging the plant?

Something is eating great holes in the leaves of my brand new rose, but I haven’t actually seen any pests yet.

It’s been chucking down rain all week here but I think it’s going to be dry for a few days now. Have ordered horticultural soap to make up a spray solution, in the faint hope it’ll somehow be more magical than plain old Fairy liquid.

My spuds were inundated afew years ago. I made strong garlic water and sprayed all my plants liberally and to my amazement, it seemed to have worked, no blackfly! I have no idea whether it really was the garlic water, or something else though, in truth.

Just discovered my poor cherry tree is absolutely covered in the little buggers. I've sprayed with diluted fairy liquid, but I expect I'll have to spend the weekend picking them all off 😕

@LemonJuiceFromConcentrate

Something is eating great holes in the leaves of my brand new rose, but I haven’t actually seen any pests yet.

It’s been chucking down rain all week here but I think it’s going to be dry for a few days now. Have ordered horticultural soap to make up a spray solution, in the faint hope it’ll somehow be more magical than plain old Fairy liquid.

Could be leaf cutter bees, they always go for my roses!

Blackfly still here, I might have to do something at the weekend as the sticky muck they exude is dripping onto everything underneath, including my herbs.