Help! It’s a plague of aphids!

[Sensibletrousers]

I’ve just spent so much money and so many man hours making my little garden lovely for the first time - new flowerbeds, pots and baskets. It’s my mental health therapy! Last Sunday we were engulfed in white flies, literally had to abandon our BBQ and move inside. Cars are covered in the whitefly / aphid’s sticky honeydew. ALL my precious plants are COVERED under every single leaf with these bastard aphids.

I am shooting them with water+soap solution twice a day but they come back. The air is full of clouds of the beasts. We have a very large tree (neighbour’s) that overhangs our garden and it is completely infested - flies and larvae on every leaf, the whole tree is infested.

We can’t have our patio doors open, can’t sit in the garden, can’t hang laundry out as everything gets completely covered in them.

What can we do? I’m devastated at potentially losing all my lovely new plants and flowers!

Buy some ladybirds, sounds like you need a lot though so could be ££

Try to encourage sparrows and other birds i to your garden by way of bird feed and baths. They eat mine

I don’t mind a few, but this is literally like a biblical plague! Not just a few here and there - CLOUDS of them and they are covering every surface in the garden, not just the plants!!!!!

Bug Clear? They also make rose clear. Probably not amazing for the environment though...

Buy ladybird larvae, they eat more aphids than ladybirds and you have a bit more control over where they go.

I immediately thought of the bad tempered ladybird 😂