I got a new camera for Father’s Day. It’ll be here tomorrow. If you follow this blog for whatever reason, you’ll know that I take a lot of pictures. My old Nikon Coolpix 5700 wasn’t cutting it anymore. A very nice camera for what it is, it’s a) got a fixed lens, b) slow as molasses in January at taking and recording pictures, and c) slow (in the aperture sense) so that it’s constantly trying to pop up its flash and use it in daylight.
I’ve got a Canon 40D coming. It’s referred to as a “prosumer” model digital SLR. I get to start collecting lenses. I’m starting with a 50mm f1.4 Canon lens that is purported to enable all kinds of natural light shots. The thing is supposed to be pretty much instant on with more than 6 shots per second continuous. Without going into all the snazzy specs, let me just say, I’m stoked. Again.
What I’m NOT stoked about is that Cedar, my Supreme Executive Commander of Field Operations is leaving me for a real job. She’s been helping me in the garden for more than a year, and I’m a little concerned about my ability to keep up without her conscientious work ethic. On top of that, we spent many hours discussing plants, dirt, and politics. Now, it’s back to muttering swearwords to myself and doing my own weeding. Still, she’s scored what sounds like her perfect job elsewhere. I can’t kick at that. The end of an era.
Finally, I’ve got black aphids on my Rainier cherry. They’re all over the growing tips, and they’re sucking the life out of them.
Fascinating little factoid about aphids: they can give birth, without a mate, to pregnant females. Isn’t that… disgusting? No, wait, and then… based on changing light levels, they start cranking out males so that they can make eggs to overwinter. Freaks!
Anyway, the thing with aphids is that they reproduce fast. Really fast. As in, one of the little buggers can produce thousands of offspring. Now, THAT is why it doesn’t really help to spray for them unless you want to go full chemical warfare and kill everything in the city limits. Even if one of them gets past you, a couple of weeks, and they’re all back.
What you want to have happen is a robust population of predators– ladybugs, syrphid flies, lacewings, etc. The problem is that THEY don’t have pregnant babies. They all go through the normal process, and it takes a while. In the meantime, the you-know-whats are producing their freaking little pregnant clone armies and sucking the life out of your cherry tree.
So, the question is… should I do anything?
No matter what I do, the ladybugs crawling around (having good old sex, thank you very much) are going to suffer. Even if I spray with water, it’ll knock them and their progeny off the tree– at least the adults can fly back. Don’t even get me started on spraying other stuff. Still, if I don’t do ANYTHING, the seething hordes overrun the poor tree so badly that branches just start throwing in the towel and crisping up.
If you’re waiting for the smarty-pants answer, I don’t have it. Right now, I’m doing two things:
1) Battling the ants that put the damn things there in the first place. Often, you’ll find that an aphid problem is actually more of an ant problem, since the ants will basically “farm” them for honeydew. The ants will even, I’m told, store their eggs over the winter in their nests and defend them from predators. I’ve put a tanglefoot strip around the trunk of the tree. That worked for a while, until the ants figured out that some nearby plants touch the tree above that trap. They’re back.
2) Rinsing them off with a jet of water when the populations get so out of hand that I don’t think the predators would ever catch up. I’m not sure it really helps the situation, but it makes me feel better to blast them.
Eventually, I guess, the weather will takes its own toll on them, and the numbers will subside. In the meantime, I encourage the immigration of as many predators as I can by planting beds of their favorite plant snacks and avoiding any -icides, organic or otherwise whenever possible (e.g., no sulfur fungicide, and my peach tree would be a gooey brown rot mess.)
The cherry is definitely the worst case of an infestation that I have right now (followed by a lovely crop of root weevils munching on my evergreen huckleberries). We’ll have to wait and see if my action through inaction approach pans out in the long run.
I do the water blasting, which makes me feel better. Sometimes I just cut off the aphid-covered areas and toss the whole end into the city compost collection.
Also, because my garden’s so small, I like to find ladybugs or assassin bugs (or ladybug larvae) and gently move them to the aphid-afflicted plant. Then I sit and watch them chow down for a while, which also makes me feel better. And I figure that if they’re well-fed, they’ll be more likely to have little ladybug progeny sooner.
The aphids and slugs are much less of a nuisance this year, but for some reason I have hordes of earwigs chowing on everything.