I use diatomaceous earth dusted on the plants and at the base of the plants after blasting them hard with water to get rid of all the aphids. Make sure they are pretty dry before applying the DE. I guess it loses it's effect if it gets wet. I've also dusted the squash plants with DE this year after seeing a squash bug and baby squash bugs. Not SVBs but the squash bugs. After two weeks of being dusted, I have not seen another bug, juvenile or egg cluster. I really like DE for a lot of things. Just make sure you wear a mask or don't breath it in, it can irritate the lungs because it's sharp particles of natural silica. The other thing that's been really helping my war on ants is boric acid. I make traps with 4 parts sugar, 1 part boric acid (sometimes I use peanut butter or syrup) and put on little saucers or paper plates. The ants carry it back to the nests and it kills the entire colony. This is working great for the desert fire ants that I have. It's really good in the house and around the chickens. Also good placed on the edges of the garden when I see a line of ants headed to feed on something like the eggplant or okra.

I saw a documentary on ants by some famous ant scientist. Ants also secrete a pheremone where they walk and that is how the soldier ants know where to go- to bring food to the queen etc. If you watch ants they form trails- patterns that they all follow. If you put down something to distract them such as lavender oil, black pepper- something with a strong lasting smell they will get to that place and loose the pheremone scent and turn around. You will then see some very confused ants. I don't know about the whole aphid thing but I do know this is fact. So- if you really feel the need to get rid of the ants- experiment with this and see what happens. I tried this when I had an infestation of these tiny ants which happened to be in an external modem for the phone.It was so gross but I still had a hard time killing these little creatures carrying eggs trying to protect them when they were disturbed. So out came the lavender oil and away they went.Anyway I have millions of tiny ants in the garden this year and I wondered if they were somewhere in the chain of disaster I'm experiencing. See my post on bugs, bugs, bugs!

Ok, so I have done some research and some shopping. For the little caterpillars eating up the young leaves, whatever they are, I got a small bottle of a product containing BT and sprayed that last night. I've also found basic instructions for making an insecticidal soap concentrate that I can easily mix up with other additives or use on it's own when needed. It is the one where you mix 1/4 of a bar of the Fels-Naptha laundry soap with a quart of hot water to make your concentrate. The for the spray you mix 1 tsp per qt of water or 4tsp per gallon. The full bar of soap cost 99 cents at the grocery so I guess you could say the quart of concentrate cost about a quarter and will make about 48 gallons of treatment spray. That is about half a cent per gallon. Pretty good when you figure a spray bottle of insecticidal soap spray at the store costs 4 or 5 dollars. After noticing that the lilly miller insecticidal oil is really just canola oil, I found that canola oil is about 4 times less costly at the grocery store. I got a bit of canola oil for use as needed since I have seen several recipies that call for it or another cooking oil and some directions that use canola oil as the primary ingredient. I found some hard yellow plastic that I cut into rectangles and smeared with organoside to make sticky traps. Not that the organoside is required for such a thing but the cooking oil attracted ants and seemed to loose effectiveness after rain where as the organoside gets very sticky and remain so even when rinsed with water. These sticky traps will probably be more effective if I hang them on sticks above the plants rather than just laying them on the mulch around the garden as they are at the moment. However, when I was testing out some of the sticky trap materials (and discovered the cooking oil spray attracted ants, I smeared the bottom of those bits of plastic with peanut butter mixed with boric acid powder. The ants are definitely attracted to those bates, hopefully they are effective. However the ants that were attracted to the cooking oil are not the ants that are farming the aphids. Has anyone use any of the products that are made of sesame oil, Thyme oil, and clove oil? I have used Organoside before which is sesame oil and fish oil. It is effective but rather unplesant to have everywhere around the garden and I don't want to spray on any plants once fruit starts to develop since it doesn't wash off the fruit very well. I'm just wondering if the stuff made with the sesame, Thyme and clove is less unplesant and therefore more appropriate for eddible plants? I did also get some neem oil to use if the pests persist against the less powerful methods.

Karin, I looked at your metal tray. i think you could find something more cost effective that would work better for your plan. I think that thin metal will have a short life span, and needs drainage holes or things will drown. One suggestion is a company called Anderson that makes tree band pots for grafting,etc. They make a square tray 5 inches deep with good bottom drainage. It is injection molded plastic that should last for several seasons or more depending on the UV exposure. I have built a table with treated lumber and plywood and drapped in a rubber liner. I added a edge board around the border to make a very large 48"x32 foot tray. This entire surface could be filled with soil. i pitched it in one direction so the excess water will run off. I have been growing in a greenhouse for about 14 years now. Those ants and aphids still give me problems during certain seasons. They seem to find ways around impediments. Some growers shut their house up tight in the middle of the summer for a few days and cook everthing so you can start fresh. During the spring when lady bugs are going strong, as well as aphids, I go around collecting there eggs layed on leaves outside the greenhouse, and bring them to the greenhouse crops to hatch. Once these hatch they will do a lot of damage to aphid populations. I have had some success with release of ladybugs, but they are generally not happy staying in a greenhouse and fly away soon. They will surpress aphids and if aphids are in high numbers lay there eggs in infested areas, before they start their migration. Unfortunatly with beneficials you are not able to soap if you expect them to do their job, so it is a difficult thing to figure out if you should stick with soaps sprays, or hope the beneficials take off. It will work well certain times of the year before the season gets too warm. I have also had natural populations of parasitic wasps build up, so keep an eye open to that as well. They can be purchased, but because they have to be overnighted shiped, they are too expensive. If you see leaves with mummified aphids remove it from your crop but keep it in the greenhouse. this will allow the wasps to hatch out and seek out new aphids. Good Luck