SmackDown: LadyBugs vs. Aphids!

Chris Fedderson — MacroFine Musings
Kathy Lawler — Guest Blogger
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While watering our flowers, specifically our Hellebores, I noticed that some of the leaves were getting wrinkled, curled, and yellow.  Since we don’t use pesticides in the garden area, we do expect that we will, from time to time, have plants that have been munched on, or leaves that aren’t doing well.  But this damage looked like it was more than a random act of a few bad leaves.
 
Upon closer look, I found Aphids on our plant.  Ugh.  I also found aphids on our Habanero Peppers growing on the second floor deck.  These were easy to wash off with mild household detergent and water — the plants were small and are in a small pot. 
 
I wasn’t sure what to do with the Hellebores and other yard plants though, since they are much larger and in the ground, so I went in search of a solution . . .

TaDaaa!
Our Solution!

Turns out the Nursery near our house carries containers of Ladybugs (and Praying Mantids) to help one in combating aphids and mealy bugs and other soft-bodied insects!  We thought this would be a great solution and Chris would also be able to shoot a few new images of one of his favorite subjects.

Chris took this beautiful image when several of our new ladybugs on landed one of our annuals, an Osteospermum, called Blue-Eyed Beauty.  As you can see from the image the flowers are yellow, white, and purple with a blue eye in the center.

The contrast with the flower and the color of the ladybugs is a spectacular color-combination to photograph; we touched on this in our blog post, Color Me Confused.

Look Ma!
No Aphids!

But back to our aphid issue!  There are a variety of natural solutions you can try when combating Aphids.  You will be happy to know that the addition of Ladybugs did the trick in our garden.  The Ladybugs won the SmackDown and our garden is back in balance. 

Thank You for visiting,
 
— Kathy

 
P.s.      How do you get rid of garden pests?  Share your organic methods with us and our readers.