Years ago I picked up a t-shirt with a cut-out iron-on of an aphid underscored with the words: “Aphids Suck“. The double entendre still makes me giggle. Don’t get it? You aren’t alone; I’ve had to explain it to more than one new client as they quizzically eyed my potentially offensive t-shirt.
Aphids on Iris
The first meaning is pretty straightforward for anyone who has had to deal with aphids: they’re an annoying garden pest we lament whenever we find them damaging our plants — or worse after they’re long gone and we find the curled up, puckered, blackened, sticky, messed up plants left in the wake of their earlier visit. The second meaning gets into a deeper understanding of the pest itself.
When studying pests and disease, its important to understand how they do damage. This helps us identify which pest may have been on a plant in the past (or may be on it currently). In the case of the aphid, we know they have sucking mouth parts. They literally suck the juices out of the stems, flowers, buds and leaves of plants leaving behind contorted, twisted, puckered plants in their wake. Simultaneously, they excrete pure sugar (like nasty, nasty Scale insects). Their sugar poo and their soft-bodies can then attract a host of other pests like ants and carnivorous wasps. The ants to sip up their honey poo; the wasps to eat them up – yum! Aphids also attract beneficials like hummingbirds and insects like lady beetles (aka lady bugs to most of us). Soft aphids are a favored food for lady beetle larvae, meat eatin’ bees, and for hungry hummingbirds. (Gotta be clear – the wasp can be both a pest and a beneficial!)
So, what to do when your plants get infested with aphids? Well, it can depend on your tolerance.
Iris Blooming Just Fine Despite Aphid Infestation
Start by examining your plants closely. Do you have lady bug babies on the same plants? If so, perhaps leave the aphids alone and let the young ladies have their meal. You’ll be rewarded with a lovely hatch of lady beetles to enjoy later in the season.
Okay, so you just can’t stand it — lady beetle larvae or not. Those aphids have to go.
You don’t want your flowers mangled and your leaves puckered. Start by cutting out any older growth that may be infested with the pests. Often, I find that early bloomers, like hellebores are a first favorite of the aphid. They hatch early on the waning flowers of these plants. Unless you’re hoping to save seeds, cut out the spent flowers, removing the aphids as well — before they spread out to other plants in the garden.
So, the aphids aren’t on spent flowers but are on new growth instead. In these cases, try blasting the plants with forceful jets of water and blow those aphids away. Be careful though – you don’t want to blow away your tender perennials at the same time. Or, if you just have a few clustered hatches, consider simply wiping them away.
Yes, pesticides exist for defense against aphids — even some homemade remedies claim to work. But, if you can stand and manage a small number of them in your garden, know that they do become a part of the larger eco-system feeding other beneficials in the garden. So rather than spending time and money on a bottle of questionable chemicals, perhaps incanting Robert Herrick’s poetic double entrendre will remind you that taking a moment to participate in the garden, to pick that flower (or that flower’s pest) is a fleeting opportunity — as is your life as well as the life of the flower itself:
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow will be dying.
– Robert Herrick, Excerpted from To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time
