Usually, the aphids will be a problem only for a couple weeks at most. Then the good bug (like Lady bugs) will come along and eat 'em up--problem solved. Of course, if you have been spraying insecticides, you've probably killed off most of the good bugs--which is why you may have to stop the insecticides for a year. The next year, the good bugs should show up to help you. While you wait for the good bugs, you may have to manually get rid of the aphids for a while--gently run a finger and thumb up around a heavily covered bud. That will kill most of them there. If you are squeamish, the soap spray will help--until the good bugs come along and take over the job. Or some people use a stiff spray of water to flush the aphids off the buds. If your blooms are getting all eaten up, I'd guess you have a different bug problem than an aphid problem. If it happens, take pics and show them to us here. Maybe we can help you figure our the problem and solution. As far as fungicides go, most of Bayers products aren't that good or have some negatives built into them--my advice is to stay away from anything they sell that says all-in-one or three-in-one or anything like that. On the other hand, the Bayer spray called Bayer Garden Disease Control for Roses, Flowers, and Shrubs is excellent. Follow directions carefully, and everything should be fine after a couple sprayings. Hope that helps. Kate

OMG, it IS the MEXICAN BEAN BEETLE. The picture kimmsr gave shows one the tan color it became after I put it in the plastic container. No longer orange. Well, that tells me I better get rid of the old squash plants and let the raised beds go dormant for a while. Rhizo1, I appreciate your offer of help with the scheffelera. I've used ammonia to clean the leaves, and I will spray the plant with Windex and wipe the leaves. To be so tiny, they sure do put a lot of sticky stuff on the leaves. I keep the scheffelera on the sun porch which is also the home of my two parrots. So I am low tech with the pest removal. The parrots, an African grey and an eclectus, enjoy shredding leaves occasionally, so nothing with a residue left on the leaves is my plan. Also on the porch is an 8' tall ficus benjamina, and several bromeliads and Christmas cacti. As far as I can tell, none of these plants has any scale. But I worry about my beloved ficus. It does not like to be moved, so I try to keep a close eye on it. What do you suggest that I try to remove the scale? If I rake the scales off with a paper towel as I polish the leaves, what % of scale will remain undetected? Is it worth the effort doing it by hand?

All of us here are well aware of how beneficial they are in gardens, but they can become pests if hundreds or thousands of them decide they want to spend the winter indoors with you.....so just be aware of that when cold weather is approaching in the autumn or winter. I just take the time to gather them up and release them in the barn or the greenhouse. When you let them stay indoors, they can create a stinky situation after a while, so I'd rather not let them overwinter in the house. If you have pest bugs around that the ladybugs like to eat, they ought to show up on their own, unless you live in an area where pesticide use or something else drastic has either killed them all or driven them away. I usually see about two weeks of fairly heavy pest insect population growth before the ladybugs show up, lay eggs, and give you tons more ladybugs. The larvae don't look at all like ladybugs----they look like little gray alligator-shaped or dragon-shaped insects----and sometimes people don't realize that they are the ladybug larvae and kill them. It is the larvae that really devour tons and tons of pest insects like mites, mealy bugs, leafhoppers, scales and aphids (and many others as well). If you've never released ladybugs before, be advised that often they simply fly away shortly after being released. There's a couple of ways to encourage them to stay around: 1) be sure you do have pest insects for them to eat. If you release them before the pest insects are present in sufficient numbers to feed them, they'll just fly away. They won't stay if there's not a big enough food supply to feed them and their children. 2) You can Google and find recipes for wheast or you can buy some wheast from some of the same places that sell ladybugs. This is like fast food for lady bugs (and also for green lacewings) and helps encourage them to stay on your property if there's not yet enough pest insects to eat. You mix it up and spray it on the plants and it gives them a food source to feed upon before the pest population is sufficiently large enough to feed them. 3) Release them in the evening and, if you wish, release half of them one day and the other half the next day. Scatter them around the yard or garden instead of just dumping all of them out in one spot so that they won't feel like they are in an overpopulated area. Lady bugs are great. Yesterday I saw the regular orange ones, and also some pink, red and black ones in my garden. They were particularly busy on the corn and cabbage plants. Finally, to encourage them (and other beneficial insects) to show up in the first place and then to stay, it helps if you are growing plants with tiny flowers that they can use for a food source (pollen and/or nectar). I usually have the following growing in my garden for the ladybugs: calendula, coreopsis, sweet alyssum, dill, fennel, tansy, statice, silver tansy, marigolds, yarrow and cilantro. Outside the garden there's also wild carrots and dandelions in bloom. I also tend to let lots of my other herbs go into bloom periodically (lemon balm, catnip, catmint, an onion here and there, etc.) for the beneficial insects. They need water too and if there isn't any available, they'll leave to find it. Right now, with all the torrential rainfall in Oklahoma, we have lots of standing puddles of water, but I usually keep shallow pans and a birdbath filled with water for the beneficial insects, with the bottom of the pan and birdbath filled with pebbles so the little ladybugs can perch on the pebbles to drink without drowning. Normally, once you've attracted local ladybugs to your garden, or once you've successfully released purchased ones and had them stick around, you'll never be without ladybugs again. Even when it seems like there are not many nearby, they are there, even though they won't show up in large numbers until there's a sufficient food supply available for them.

If you ever see a black ladybug with two big spots (called the twice stabbed ladybug), that's the black morph of this insect. Even though it's not a true ladybug, it behaves like one. Adults and larvae feed voraciously on soft bodied insects like aphids. Interestingly, I used to see Olla v-nigrum in both manifestations on the small campus where I used to teach, where they could be found in large numbers.