Posted on 05/19/2012 4:44:53 PM PDT by djf
Now I have lived in the same house for 20 tears. And years ago, right after we first moved in, my wife had planted these tea rose thingies.
That's ok. They can be a bit of a mess to take care of, but this year something happened for the very first time.
Rather it DIDN'T happen and it might be a mixed blessing, but wanted to ask fellow FReeper gardeners if they noticed the same thing.
Year after year, just about the first sign of life on the roses, late March or mid April FOR SURE is...
APHIDS!!!
This year NOT ONE SINGLE APHID!! This is totally unheard of and beyond my experience gardening here in the Pacific Northwest.
Now I don't miss them at all. But it seems very strange. I haven't noticed a large increase in ladybugs or anything else that might effect them, and I didn't use and more or less pesticides than I have in the past.
Anybody have any ideas?
/johnny
Have you been using the garden to recyle your beer? Has your dog?
Aphids messed me up.. I used seven dust.. waiting to get flamed.. but that’s my post and I stick to it..
I noticed the absence of aphids on my rhodie blooms this year. Usually, the buds are crawling with aphids, but this year - nothing!
I live in Longview, WA.
We had a very cold period a few weeks back after a warming period. It was cold enough to frost. I wonder if that would have killed off any potential aphid army?
Thank the Lord...and move on !!!!!
Seriously, nothing has changed. I was wondering if anybody else noticed it. Maybe they all went south for the summer... It’s quite unusual, and it seems SOMETHING must have changed, but nothing I did.
Did you ever hear of “global warming?” :))
CONFIRMATION!!
Thank you.
I have roses in about 6 spots, different types, and usually they ALL have some aphids. Never noticed them so much on the rhodies. But each tear I grow cabbage and they tend to love that stuff, this year they are clean also.
Hope it’s not some nasty environmental indicator.
I am in NJ and a novice gardener (I mean, novice probably gives me more credit that I deserve, I grew up in apartments my own life and now I’m trying to grow things), but I did notice the rhodie that are planted by my deck (not by me, exisitng when we moved in) look FABULOUS this year.
We had an extremely mild and dry winter, probably the easiest winter I can remember in my 54 years, could that be it?
Have you been gardening organically over the past several years? There’s oftentimes a lagging effect of gardening without synthetics that isn’t fully realized for a few years. Maybe the aphid predators just caught up with them?
I live on the Hood Canal. This is the best Spring on record for many, many moons. Thank your blessings the Aphids are gone.
Perhaps, you live close to a medical marijuana farmer and he unleashed some predator mites. That happened to me about 10 years ago in Kingston.
A rather large grower who lived a street over released 100,000+ Lady Bugs on his crop. Instead of staying put they swarmed the neighborhood and roosted on the South wall of my shop. LOL! I bet he didn’t waste his money on such silly “Integrated Pest Management” scheme’s after that!
The only thing different was that last year I put a bit more lime on them than I usually do. Maybe 50% more. And not even on all the roses...
If you don’t want to go the insecticide route go with Ladybugs. I think you can order them live either on line or ask at a local garden center. Ladybugs just eat them things right up!
HAARP!
There is a place down in the valley near me that has a ton of wild dill growing, I could go and snag some of that. For some reason, ladybugs absolutely love dill and the plants are usually covered with them.
More seriously, are your ants gone?
Sadly, no.
Oh well!!
What do you do with your tobacco, have you ever tried to make a cigarette equal to a store bought one (refined, well dried,flavorful)?
I’ve considered a tobacco crop.
Is it hard to grow in Texas?
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