Last year was the first year I was bothered with these pests. Other than squishing there is nothing else can be done about them is there? I have been watching my milkweed and so far this spring I have not seed any.

Hi,

As my milkweed has began to come up this spring, the aphids have found it immediately. The only successful way I have found to get them off as often as needed is to spray them with the water hose. The vegetation is tender but holds up to a spraying hard enough to knock them off. It is my best line of defense all year.

Leubafr (Mary)

Hosing them is the only way I've found to get rid of them, too, Mary, but it's just temporary - they always return, and quickly! :(
MissSherry

I hose mine off as well...I have grown some A. speciosa this year, Paul. I also have some 'mystery' Milkweed. These are seeds that I received from various folks that were didn't have any label of sorts.

I have now collected 59 Monarch eggs in the past 36 hours. Yippee! I tell you, that mama has a tendency to oviposit on the YOUNGEST plants (the plants that are, oh, 1" to 2" tall...drives me nuts!). I did get some great pics which I will post later. You will giggle when you see her since it looks like she's walking on the soil...

Absolutely true, Sherry! I've found monarch eggs on milkweed just a few inches tall here.

Mama knows her babies like nice tender food.

59 eggs???

Your students will be very busy raising cats until the end of the school year! That's great.

I'll be a while here before I get to see a Monarch cat or adult. I can't wait!!!

MissSherry,

How come I have a girl up here laying eggs, and you don't have yours yet?

Also, a note of observation....yes, mama does like the tenderest leaves, and new shoots erupting from the froung are choicest. And of course that leaves me worrying about enough food.....but an interesting observation I made last year:

I left some cats to dine on their own outside, on a couple of MW plants that were sparsely equipped. I remember checking one such "naked" plant for a week, and I couldn't find the cat anywhere.....then the plant produced new foliage, and "poof", there was the cat! I concluded that it hid away somewhere and waited for more food to produce. Also, I planted some MW in a location far away from my other MW, and a couple of days later I noticed a 2nd instar cat that definately wasn;t there when I planted it....I believe it wandered from my kitty garage and found the plant. They never cease to amaze me!

Paul, perhaps your monarch overwintered in one of the rumoured overwintering areas along the coast of S.Carolina or Georgia.

I remember reading about these areas the winter before this.

I'm in a MW and monarch scarce area, Paul. :( I haven't seen any monarchs this year - I usually don't see my first one until about August. I'm working on my own personal MW, but even if my entire property were filled with it, I don't know if that'd help the situation here. I just enjoy raising my usual August batch - for whatever reason, I must be on their 'return to Mexico' route, and one nearly always leaves me a small batch of eggs.
MissSherry

After spraying your plants, release ladybugs into your garden at dusk. They will quickly control your aphid population.

Stephanie

I did the same I released ladybugs the love aphids.It really works good.Not so sure about the spidermites but you can see them eatting the aphids .

Does Garlic Chives repel aphids?!! I winter sowed some garlic chives this year because swallowtails are supposed to like the flowers and I came across at least a couple sites today that say garlic chives will repel aphids. I'm thinking about planting it around my milkweed. Hope it works. Has anyone tried it? I need to make sure it doesn't also repel Monarchs I guess. lol

I dunno Christie....worth a try.

I found in my releases earlier this year that placing the bags of ladybugs at the base of the plant and letting a dozen or so escape up the plant, then shifting the bag, was the most successful. 'Sprinkling' the bugs was a waste of time--they pretty much panicked and I never saw them again. The ones that crept on the plants from the base were too busy eating as they went to fly.

(I found one in my hair eating aphids that shook off onto me, hours later and indoors...LOL)

I didn't have too many ladybugs last year, but had tons of lacewings. The year before last, I had ladybugs EVERYWHERE! Between the larvae and adult stage they form a hard capsule that is fastened to a plant, and these were everywhere I looked on my pine tree, so I had tons of ladybugs. I guess they're like any other insect, you have years where they are abundant, and years when they aren't.

I'm just hoping like heck I see honeybees this year.

Susan

Don't forget to keep an eye out on what the ladybugs are eating, if you happen to get a large number of them. They are completely thrilled if they happen upon a nice banquet of moth or butterfly eggs or YOUNG caterpillars.

I have found that mixing liquid soap with water and spraying it on the aphids will kill them. After allowing to dry, spray off the plants with water to get rid of the dead aphids and liquid soap.

rhizo--thanks for the heads-up!

But I think they'll take a long while to run out of aphids, and in the meantime I doubt they'll be eating too many keeper critters. :)

I won't begrudge them a few.

Me neither, Pam. They do more good than harm, IMHO. I seem to have plenty of butterfly eggs and cats despite ladybugs and lacewings. They DO seem to prefer eating aphids. I guess it's the difference between eating a juicy T-bone and Spam.

Susan

I squoosh them but this year I think I'll wear gloves when I do. Those things stain my hands!
I wish someone would come out with some kind of a trap for those pests just like there's one for Japanese beetles, but considering that there's only one sex of the Oleander aphid, I guess phermones wouldn't work in a trap. I'd love if there were an easy way to get rid of them. It almost makes my skin crawl to see them hanging in clumps on a milkweed plant. Ewwww!

I agree! I am out there right now harvesting Monarch eggs and then I spot some of those !@$%^ Oleander Aphids so of course I squish the !@#$% out of them which causes my fingers to become yellow. I am certain people who see my fingertips think I am a smoker or something...tee-hee! Wouldn't they be surprised to find that I am an Aphid-Killer?

Pam, I also put the Ladybugs at the base of the plants. I spray everything with water FIRST before I even put the Ladybugs out. I also put the beetles out in the evening...

The other day we had a grand 'teachable moment' in my class when one of the little ones came in with what he thought was butterfly eggs. They were...Ladybug Eggs! Yippee! He was so excited when he found out they were Ladybug eggs and that he was able to 'give the teacher a special gift.' :)

Gotta love it!

Tdogmom - aka AK. Tee Hee! I haven't seen too many bugs this year yet. But something is eating the bedickens out of my hollyhocks and malva - could it be slugs?

Susan

Ha, Sherry will soon have so many names we won't be able to remember them all! :)
I remember that my hollyhocks had so many holes in them last year too and I wondered what was eating them. I didn't see any Painted Lady or Common Checkered Skipper cats on them, but then again, that would almost be impossible since I never saw those kinds of butterflies here. Oh, I just can't wait to see what I get this year!

Oh, Susan, did I tell you that I didn't know where to get a gas plant so I went ahead and ordered some seeds from that J.L. Hudson that you told me about. I just found out about a month (if that) ago that they don't bloom until the third year, and now I see on the pack that it says the seeds need cold treatment for 3-5 months. ARG! Now I'll have to wait even longer because they won't get planted outside until next spring, I guess. If I'd just chill them until the end of June, they would probably be big enough to plant in late August, I'm thinking, and that is pretty late to start plants up this far north. They wouldn't have much time to get going before we'd have a frost (early October). So I think I'll chill them for five months, which would be the end of September. Since they're technically seeds for the 2007 season, I wonder if they'd be any good if I waited until about next February to start them inside or if I should start them inside right after they're done chilling. Just thinking out loud...I don't know if anyone knows the answer to that one.
Cathy
Cathy