My crew said to spray the willow, but ladybugs handled the aphids perfectly.

4 comments

4 Comments

Yeah the ladybug thing really works. I had a bad aphid spot on my roses last year and bought a carton of them from the garden store. They cleaned it up in like four days and then just stuck around. Way better than messing with sprays.

jana6721mo ago

Those little guys are like tiny six-legged mercenaries. Just drop them into the war zone and let them collect their payment in aphids. Way more fun than some chemical spray that probably kills half the good stuff too. Plus you get the bonus of watching them just hang out after, like retired soldiers on permanent vacation. Cute little killers.

thomasgonzalez16d ago

Man, that reminds me of the year the mantis egg case hatched on our porch light. We had a cloud of those tiny hunters just descend on everything, and the fly population CRASHED. It was like nature's own pest control just showed up with a work order.

elliot_mason621mo ago

I released about 1500 ladybugs on a willow with a bad aphid problem last spring. They totally cleaned it up in a week, just like @jana672 said about them being little mercenaries. I still see their larvae and eggs on the leaves sometimes, so they stuck around. It felt way better than spraying anything.