Natural Aphid Spray

Aphids (also called blackfly or greenfly) are evil!! They come in a variety of colors, pink, yellow, gray-white, or brown and there's hundreds of different types. You'll find that the majority are about 1/16 inch long (2mm) (small enough to kill your plants without detection) but they can grow to about 1/4 inch (5-6mm). In addition to being tiny terrors they breed like rabbits!! All summer long they are breeding and the new babies are ready to start their own family after only 1-week.

What Damage Do They Do?

Some aphids are choosy about what type of plant they will attack but not all. No matter what their plant of choice is the outcome is generally the same, infestations stunt growth, and ruin leaves. The way they do this is by excreting something called honeydew on the leaves, this stuff, in turn, encourages the growth of a black , sooty mold.

How To Get Rid Of Them - Naturally

I was admiring my beautiful strawberry plant and noticed a swarm of some tiny little insects crawling around near the soil. After some research I identified them as aphids and read through a few suggestions for natural aphid sprays to get rid of them because I didn't want to use any chemical insecticide sprays on my food plants. Since I didn't have all of the ingredients that the sites called for, I put something together that I thought might work based on their suggestions.

What I Used

Spray bottle

water

1 teaspoon of dish soap (Ultra Palmolive)

1 tablespoon of lemon juice (Pompeii lemon juice)

So I mixed all of this together and sprayed it on my plant, once a day, for 4 days and now I can't see one aphid on my plant and it looks quite happy.

I don't know if what I did was the best approach, but it worked and it didn't seem to harm my plant. I also seen some mixtures that used grated oranges, boiled, in a similar way as the lemon juice and one that had only dish soap (2 tsp) and vegetable oil (1 cup) mixed with water in a spray bottle to do it too but I haven't tried these.

If you do have an aphid infestation you want to get rid of them as soon as possible because they will ruin your plants. Happy Gardening!