Advice re pests for a newbie

lucystardust

Hi,

I'm fairly new to veg gardening - last year I tried to grow some cherry tomatoes and salad leaves on my kitchen windowsill but they got aphids and spider mites and died. I thought they would be safe inside but reading online it seems growing inside can be worse as predators like ladybirds can't eat the aphids?

This year I'm trying to get a bit more into gardening, growing courgettes, salad leaves, peppers and cherry toms from seed. So far they're coming along nicely on the windowsill. I have a balcony so am planning on planting the veg in containers so the plants will be outside in a few weeks.

I'd really appreciate any tips about how to stop pests killing my plants this year - should I be spraying them to prevent bugs or just when I notice an infestation? Which pesticides/natural deterrents work best?

sobie

you can buy natural/ organic sprays such as Bayer Organic bug free.
Or you could hang up yellow sticky traps for greenhouses above the plants. (not nice to look at in a kitchen mind)

theoretica

For aphids a spray of dish detergent in water works to kill any it soaks. I use it about the same strength I would for blowing bubbles.

Leif

Try growing something to attract hoverflies and ladybirds. Weeds such as sweet pea and mallow are good. Also Marigolds, French I think, repel pests. Pyrethrin powder is a good low toxicity insect killer, but it kills them all, good and bad. It degrades in a few weeks, so there is no issue with food plants.

I have grown chillis indoors for 15 years or so, and the only time I have had issues with greenfly was when I bought a plant from a shop, and it came with some freeloading passengers. Aphids are very hard to kill, pyrethrin is the best solution in my experience, but it only takes ones little beggar to survive and they come back. It is said that a newborn aphid contains within it an unborn aphid.

Liz_M

Can't find a threat completely relevant to my problem but I'm also a newbie who needs help with pests!

I seem to be just about coping with the slug/snail battle so that's ok but I do have aphids and ants - are these both things I should be getting rid of? A few leaves seem to be a bit curly on my french beans but the plants seem healthy to me overall so is there any point spending time/money on getting rid of them? I tried the washing up liquid 2 or 3 times but it didn't seem to kill them all and they just kept coming back. I don't really wana use stronger chemicals as I feel bad enough about slug pellets and wasing up liquid, so would only really want to bother with the aphid killing if either they were going to start invading the house, or if they're going to kill my beans overall!

Likewise with the ants... they were just running around at first but now there seem to be more and they've made a little dirt pile in between some paving flags (I have a yard so everything is in pots) - but they've started grouping up what I guess must be their eggs on the underside of some of my courgette leaves - will this harm the plant? Again I'll get rid if it helps the plant, but not sure I can be bothered going to the effort if there's no need - that wouldn't be very MSE either!

Funky_Bold_Ribena

Ants...work out where their nest is and pour boiling water over it.

Aphids, either use weak washing up liquid, squish or try and attract hover flies and ladybirds if you can...I just leave them be and in a day or so the ladybirds usually come along and feast on them...but then again I leave hollow stemmed plants all winter for them to hibernate in so that they are there when I need them next spring.