Blackfly on runner bean plants

JuC

I have a fairly large row of runner bean plants and some of the plants are covered in blackfly right up the cane. I have also noticed that they are spreading to the young beans themselves. The thought of scrubbing off blackfly before eating doesn't appeal much!

I have just sprayed them with some washing up water but is there anything I can do. I also saw that there was some whitefly(?) too on some of them.

Also some ants were hanging around - are they eating the blackfly?

Thanks for any advice you can give

emiff6

Well, if you hadn't already sprayed them with chemicals (washing up liquid), I would have said just leave them, because inside a week the ladybirds would have found them, laid eggs, and by the next week their larvae would have eaten all the blackfly. It is unbelieveable how voracious ladybird larvae are. I garden organicly and never touch greenfly or blackfly except to rub them off rose buds when I see them. When you first get them it seems like a plague, but predators soon shift the lot.

Don't know if you'll still get ladybirds now the beans are covered in washing up water.

demystified

JuC wrote: »

I have a fairly large row of runner bean plants and some of the plants are covered in blackfly right up the cane. I have also noticed that they are spreading to the young beans themselves. The thought of scrubbing off blackfly before eating doesn't appeal much!

I have just sprayed them with some washing up water but is there anything I can do. I also saw that there was some whitefly(?) too on some of them.

Also some ants were hanging around - are they eating the blackfly?

Thanks for any advice you can give

Ants farm aphids and look after them carefully, they don't eat them!

There are some organic pesticides that are reasonably effective, based on rapeseed oil, I believe. Whitefly are even worse than blackfly honestly you need to try and do something to get it under control.

JuC

Thanks for your advice. I had a similar problem last year and even with the ladybirds helping I lost quite a lot of beans so therefore I needed to try something a bit stronger this year. I just don't want to lose my crop.