Hey I know this will blow ya'lls mind but I have lady bugs in my bedroom where I have a few brugs. These suckers have no bugs on them whatsoever other than the ladybugs once in awhile. However I have about 30 brugs on the bar under a grow light and those things stay infested with those little clear whitebugs. I suspect that the lady bugs are eatting the ones in the bedroom. Where as there are none in the kitchen area. Maybe I should take some in there and put them on the brugs. It would probably be safer than spraying once a week. Of course if I removed the leaves there would be fewer bugs too. Why didn't someone let me know just how many bugs we were talking about when growing these things inside? I may have put them all in the greenhouse instead of just a few of them. A little over a month ago the ladybugs where in swarms here around my house. You couldn't go outside without being attacked by them. They were flying everywhere, and it was like something from a horror movie. You sure didn't want to open your mouth while you where out there with them. LOL Anyway I don't know how they got into the bedroom but I thought what the heck, I'll just let them stay. It's actually the guest room anyway. Low and behold the ladybugs are now my guest and the brugs seem to be enjoying having them around. (grin). I can take some pictures of them but I don't know how to put them on the web. Don't bother with trying to tell me how, I'm old and it's more trouble than it's worth. Happy Gardening Marian

I've tried tilling the soil but I guess they're either deeper then my tiller gets and/or there's just too many. I do invite all the people I know that fish to come and collect all that they can but that doesn't really put a dent in it because the entire tree is infested and it's too tall to safely get high enough up in the tree. People start calling and dropping by the house in the summer to ask if I have any worms yet. I've heard they are especially good for trout and we do have several brown trout streams nearby. I'm beginning to think that my only option will be removing the tree. They are still small and haven't made much of an impact yet but buy this time next week half the tree will be gone.

The two winged critters aren't flies. Instead, they're winged aphids, a normal occurrence when the colony becomes crowded. Long-legged flies have a metallic body and hold their wings out to the side, also horizontal. Further, their antennae are very short. Aphids aren't metallic, and their wings are held tent-like over the abdomen. Aphid antennae, although admittedly difficult to see in the above photo, are typically -- but not always -- quite long.

Mary and Brandon, I have to agree with both of you. Mary, I can understand your love of gardening, and don't want to take the love out of it to make it science. I am a gardener too, but I used to be a scientist, but then I guess there's never a "used to be" - I always will be a scientist whether or not that's what I do for a living. When I was working at it I was a botanist and worked in several different labs, both at universities for scientists on faculty and at medical centers for doctors/medical school professors. I used to be the one doing those studies, and like Brandon, I firmly believe in them. The journals where my work was published are very careful and have other scientists review the papers before they are accepted for publication. I remember one time when I observed something and repeated the experiment over and over always with the same result- like you said, Mary, - seeing is believing. I spent mind-boggling hours and hours, days and days, on the microscope counting and measuring to get sufficient numbers to be able to run statistics on. We called in the professor who taught the university Biometry course (biometry = the science of using statistics in life sciences). She worked on the numbers for a couple of weeks then told us she couldn't back up our findings. There was some missing data we had no way of obtaining. We were so disappointed, and that study was never published. I suppose we could have bent the rules as Mary said she observed, but we were ethical and just kept of working trying to fill in the blanks so we could eventually report our findings. Yes, there are disreputable people who publish studies that are questionable. Some have actually "padded their data" and reported findings that were false. Some of those people have been caught too and have lost their jobs and reputations! I still believe what I observed is true, but nobody in the scientific community will ever hear about it because my boss and I had more integrity than the people Mary described. A few posts back I mentioned a guy in Memphis who did an experiment with coffee grounds in his garden. If I had said he did a study that included statistics, Mary, would you have believed what he observed? Scientists actually DO garden and get dirt under their nails and mud on their gloves.Alan Armitage and Michael Dirr (you are probably familiar with those names) established studies at the University of Georgia on garden plants. Those studies find varieties that are best suited for our Southeastern US hot, humid, climate. Please check the link below that describes that they started and how it effects our gardening. You have to believe those "studies". Your gardens probably include some of those plants Drs. Armitage and Dirr found to be ideal for us to grow. I know I check the The Gardens at UGA to learn about new plants that can be counted on to grow well for me because they're suited for out climate and the UGA studies prove it. Looking at the results of those studies saves me a lot of money and time too. Time I can be enjoying my garden instead of worrying about this and that plant that I never should have planted in the first place. I hope to still be digging in the dirt when I'm in my 80's and 90's. Maybe by then some scientist will have come up with a foolproof way to eradicate slugs from our gardens.