Sunflowers and blackfly

scorpian81

Hi all, Does anyone know how to properly remove blackfly from sunflowers?
Mine have been covered in them and eggs. Loads of ants too which seem to be helping them.
Thanks.

ixwood

The ants are the problem. They farm aphids and milk them for a sticky sweet by product they produce. They act like Shepards and protect them from predators. They also transport then to other plants. The ants are actually quite brutal. They bite the wings off of aphids to stop them escaping and their feet have chemical excretions that make the aphids dozy and pliable.

They won't actually harm the sunflowers. You plant sunflowers for the ants/aphids to stop them bothering anything else. I've just sowed some to attract the ants away from my trees.

if you want to stop them (and accept that the ants will move onto other plants to create farms), put a ring of grease or Vaseline around the stem and ensure there's nothing bridging it above.

It works. I do it on my fruit trees. The ants won't even try and cross it. Its funny, the ones "stranded" on the tree start to systematically search for an alternative route (I flick them off after watching them for a bit) . They're amazingly clever really.

scorpian81

Thank you for the very informative and helpful reply. I'm going to give that a go!