Aphid Attack!

Yesterday, I went into my garden to take a look at how things were going.  I noticed my string of pearls has been rid of its mildew.  Hooray.  My parsley's whitefly problem is also greatly diminished with what appears to be numerous dead whiteflies on the dirt next to the plant.  Hooray again.  BUT as I looked closer, I saw that the whitefly in 3 days time has been replaced by... WHAT IS THIS??... APHIDS?!  

 

I gag.  Aphids to me are one of the most disgusting creatures alive, second only to the more disgusting cockroach. They hang out in huge groups on plants' stems and leaves literally sucking the life out of them to the point you would never even think of wanting to eat that plant.  Lest you think, "That picture looks awfully similar to the whitefly picture."  The main differences are, 1: they're bigger, about 3mm each  2: they're green (or sometimes black)  3: they're plump little pests  4: they don't fly.

Naturally, my next thoughts were how best to kill every single last one of these aphids.  For me, serious pesticides are out because I plan to eat this plant.  Even Neem oil which is pretty organic (it has medicinal uses) which I love in small doses is not something I really want to douse my plant in -- some sources mention studies that show that at least one of the component chemicals can in large doses cause temporary infertility.  Yikes.  

Fortunately, there are some easy organic home remedies that you can make yourself in no time at all -- garlic oil spray, tomato leaf spray, dish soap + water spray... the list goes on (here and here are a couple sources).  After looking at a couple sources, I decided to combine components of several for what I hope will be maximal killing effectiveness.

Michelle's modified aphid spray
You will need:
3-4 garlic cloves 
A small handful of tomato leaves
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 tablespoons oil
500mL water
A spray bottle

Cut the garlic into a few smaller pieces.  Put the garlic and the cayenne pepper in the water and bring to boil.  Then toss in your tomato leaves.  Continue to boil for a few minutes and then lower the heat and let it all simmer together for another 20-30 minutes.  Let cool.  Remove the garlic and leaves, then add your oil.  Your aphid spray is complete.

Simmering aphid killing spray

Once you're done, fill the spray bottle with your aphid killer spray, shake and spray the crap out of your plant.  Actually you should probably do a test spot first, but being too impatient for that and knowing that aphids increase in multiples of 80 per week, I decided to forgo the test spot and trust in the fortitude of my parsley.

Die, assholes

We will see if this spray actually works.  I feel like oftentimes, pests scoff at these organic home remedies, "Please, woman. Garlic scented water?"  I will keep you updated.  

On the upside, I harvested my first herb crop of the year... it is quite beautiful.  (Nevermind that I spent about 35 minutes de-pesting my parsley with a leaf by leaf examination.  *sigh*)

Beautiful herbs!

Oops, I did it again!

First, a word of wisdom:

On that note...

Oops, I killed a plant!

Soooo, that didn't take long.  I think the problem is too little water for a thirsty plant.  But especially since this has happened to me once before, I have decided that dill may be too fragile for my current gardening abilities (although the other plants are growing like crazy-- the parsley a little too crazy, it's crowding the lavender!  Maybe it's not me, it's you, Dill).

Oops, picked too small of a pot!

Same pot that killed my jasmine! Noooo!!

The rapid growth of my tomato plant was at first exciting.  Until it grew so tall that it started to look disproportionately large for the pot.  So I did some internet research and discovered that for indeterminate tomato plants, the minimum pot size is a 24 inch pot.  "Indeterminate" refers to tomato plants that do not produce all their tomatoes at once (most heirloom tomatoes are indeterminate).  This is in contrast to "determinate" tomato plants that do produce fruit all at once that need a pot at least 18 inches in size.  I don't think my pot is even 18 inches...

And oops, my plants are sick!

Once, a nice worker man at Armstrong Garden Center told me in response to my question regarding a serious pest problem in several of my plants that plants really should not get disease unless they are sick.  "That's mean," I thought, "my plants are not all sick."  The string of pearls succulent (with the mildew) could be a little stressed -- I just repotted it recently and it was looking a little tired beforehand.  But the parsley??  (The whitefly are the tiny little white specks.)  Hopefully it is not anything a little Neem oil cannot fix.

Here's another picture of whitefly, closeup (source from this informative site):

Actual size = 1-3mm each

I hope the whitefly do not become a problem -- last year, they got really out of control to the point that I couldn't stand next to my poor plant without feeling like I was going to inhale a swarm of them...

Well, on the upside, yes, I referenced a Britney Spears song today-- for any haters out there, I will just say she and I grew up together, not literally, and her music videos spawned a thousand late night dance routines in front of my mirror.  Mostly in college.  They were happy moments.