A wonderful rose friend gave me some OP seeds from a very important cross.
Only a handful germinated, only one showed promise. This seedling is prolly about 2 months old, or thereabouts.
This little fellow has had patches of yellowing of the leaves (even some browning/blackening) and the older affected leaves are all falling off.
There are aphids and sooty mold on the affected leaves. Many of these aphids do tend to hide themselves, it took me a long time to figure out what the heck was going on here, mainly because this seedling is still quite tiny. Initially I was just passing these “bad results” off as PM/BS…but something just didn’t add up with this particular seedling’s woes, so I got to the bottom of the causation yesterday after taking a much closer look at the situation…dang aphids!!! …that will teach me!!!
It looks like these critters are “sucking the life” out of its leaves, and maybe other parts, and maybe stunting its growth at this point in time. Other nearby seedlings from unrelated crosses are not so affected, this one seems to be tastier to them??
There are still aphids on the seedling, some too tiny to scrape off without causing some damage to the delicate new seedling growth (especially in its growth centre).
1 % Murphy oil soap, or Safer “organic” soap will work if you make contact with the creatures. Problem is, they drop to the ground when you disturb the plant. The soap leave no toxic residue. It is the potassium salt of fatty acids, originally softsoap. Now what is sold as softsoap is actually some detergent mix. If you don’t have the mentioned brands, you probably have equivalent. Even a good water wash twice a week will help a lot. I had my whole lot infected last spring and it was hard on them. I wasn’t bothering to do much with it until it was all over. Mistake!
These danged things are hidden in the very central part of the seedling’s growth centre. The seeldng has no other leaves left now between abscission and me cutting tow leavs out, there are no other leaves left apart from the very new ones at the very growth centre (actually it is doing a Y type growth due to low branching, so there are in fact two growth centres I think, last time I looked at it).
There is now only a leafless bare stem down below!!
There is no way spraying them to just flick them off is gonna get rid of them, I can just see them falling into the potting mix (those left that can be sprayed off, most cannot be sprayed off as they are hiding in deep parts), only to crawl back up to the plant when all is safe. Also, there might well be some very very tiny baby ones nesting in these two growth centres…they are very smart!!
The main problem here is that I am dealing with a very small seedling, and tiny baby aphids which remain after my initial getting rid of the larger ones…dealing with aphids on a much larger rose would be a piece of cake by comparison, to be sure!
Some type of chemical intervention is necessary I think, as this is a seedling I don’t want to lose!
Submersion! Soak the whole thing, pot and all, completely submersed in a bucket of water over night. It shouldn’t hurt the rose but I doubt the aphids will be able to survive that long under water.
To get a visual idea of the condition of this seedling this morning here is a pic of it (ummmmmmm… at least showing what is left of it that is, after defoliation by aphid damage and by me manually clipping off some badly affected leaves yesterday).
You might just be able to make out a more mature aphid on top of the leaf @ bottom left. Look around and you can spot others here and there as expected.
There are numerous others, hiding in the growth centres and they are babies, I am sure of that.
Marathon, or Mallet. You’ll have to google it for the active ingredient to see if it’s available in OZ.
Works like a charm, won’t hurt the plants. I’m all for organic solutions, but in the greenhouse biz we can’t mess around because aphids get out of control so fast.
George I agree with the submersion idea from Seil, but could I suggest you wrap the pot in say glad wrap, save the potting mix being water logged. The other alternative could you suspend the pot upside down and emerse the plant in water to drown the little Bu****s
I am usually a very “die hard” non-chemical/non-spray person, but I am not totally obsessive on this, either!
I can’t afford to let my anti-chemical side contribute to me possibly losing this seedling, normally I would take on board the non-insecticide ideas shared here, and I of course appreciate them all, greatly, thank y’all!!
I agree it is time to get the “bigger guns” out in this case, this seedling’s breeding has too much to offer me potentially.
Mallet looks to be 2% w/v IMIDACLOPRID, whilst the Marathon appears to be 1% w/v of the same active systemic insecticide (if I read it correctly surfing on the net).
I have to go to the shops to see if this stuff is readily available in the usual nursery outlets locally. If it is available, I will get it and use it.
In case this stuff is not readily offered to gardeners in my location, what about pyrethrums?
If they’re outside, and there aren’t bazillians of them, why not use a strong spray bottle of water and blast them out every few days until they’ve been dispatched? Chemicals would make faster elimination, but for just a few, a hand held spray bottle with a strong jet of water should do the trick without the chemicals.
Smoke em off. Incense sticks might even work. Neil[/quote]
Neil, it may be OK to smoke incense sticks, as you suggest for one way to get rid of aphids, but smoking aphids is not OK in a social setting. The smell of burned aphids is a major turnoff.
Ooo! I remember acquaintances when I was a teenager who had the characteristic lip burns from their ‘doobies’. I’d imagine the lip burns from smoking aphids would quickly make that past time history! Besides, if they scream and pop like lobsters do when you drop them in the boiling water, it would turn ME off very quickly!
If alive, yes! The buggers would keep trying to crawl out! I just had a thought…(quit laughing! LOL!) Yesterday, I caught a segment on a PBS program where they served mashed Edamame instead of mashed potatoes with a BBQ dish. It was such a brilliant green, it should be about the right color for mashed spring aphids.
Well, if you haven’t used any pesticides, they’d be “organic” and protein. Practicing your “emergency preparedness”? You might have just hit upon a new, niche organic product idea for “yuppie restaurants”!
