Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: Grubbypaws on April 24, 2019, 14:12
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I have just visited my gooseberry cordons :( :( :( They are infested with greenfly and I mean infested. I have never seen anything quite like it :ohmy:
There are times when I regret being an organic gardener and now is definitely one of them. Dilute washing up liquid is unlikely to crack this one.
Does any one have any suggestions? I scoured the garden for ladybirds but not a single one to be found.
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I'll have a word with my ladybirds - seen quite a few of them here and (or but?) no sign of any greenfly at all.
More helpfully ::), I have found that diluted washing up liquid does work, although it does of course have to be applied more than once, especially with an infestation as heavy as yours.
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Looks as if I am going to have the cleanest gooseberry bushes in town :D
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Likewise my roses. The greenfly suddenly seemed to appear almost overnight a few days ago, and are now forming thick, green encrustations around the new shoots on all my roses.
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I have a greenfly infestation on my indoor grown tomatoes, does soapy water really work?
As this is my second batch of tome and feel it's a little late to start a new batch >:( :mad:
How much soap to water ???
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It's not pleasant but running the shoots between fingers and thumb to squash them (the greenfly not the shoots :nowink:) works while you are waiting for ladybirds to arrive.
That's what I've been doing on the rose near the door, for the last few days.
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Down here the BIO cure for green fly is a product which is made from vegetable oil. It is manipulated in such a way that you can dilute it out in water, it forms very fine droplets in the water, then spray it onto the blighters. The oil in the solution coats the greenfly and they die .
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It's not pleasant but running the shoots between fingers and thumb to squash them (the greenfly not the shoots :nowink:) works while you are waiting for ladybirds to arrive.
That's what I've been doing on the rose near the door, for the last few days.
That works, though not recommended for plants with thorny shoots.
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On the plus side our bluetits are scouring the roses etc for insects to feed babies. Hopefully it won't take them long to find your green fly.
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Terrible infestation here for the last couple of months - even the new shoots of plants which are never normally affected are covered. The only effective (organic) way I’ve found of getting rid of them is squishing them by hand - yuk! Then a day or two later, they’re back. The air is full of them on an evening. Normally by now the ladybirds and birds have got the situation under control - but not this year, even though there are plenty of ladybirds about. Just too many aphids, I fear. Guess we have last summer and a mild winter to thank.
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Down here the BIO cure for green fly is a product which is made from vegetable oil. It is manipulated in such a way that you can dilute it out in water, it forms very fine droplets in the water, then spray it onto the blighters. The oil in the solution coats the greenfly and they die .
Jambop, sounds interesting - what’s it called? I wonder if you can get anything similar in the UK?
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Hi there, same issue here on gooseberries bushes and even worse on currants (some plants are so stunted The I mature fruit is now falling off. I’ve tried soapy water and neem oil but seems ineffective. I’ve also started to squish them with my fingers!!
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I'll have a word with my ladybirds - seen quite a few of them here and (or but?) no sign of any greenfly at all.
More helpfully ::), I have found that diluted washing up liquid does work, although it does of course have to be applied more than once, especially with an infestation as heavy as yours.
Spoke too soon - hundreds of greenfly on my roses now, giving me a chance to find out the most effective way of using diluted washing up liquid.
Their waxy coating seems to partially shrug off the first spraying, so I let the first one dry off before spraying again - what you are looking for is the greenfly to look soggy (for want of a better word.)
Pic shows some very soggy (and dead) greenfly on my roses after two sprayings.