20 April 2021

Customer Question – Are these aphids?

Q. “I ‘m sending you a few photos as I need some help to identify insects that are causing havoc to my plants indoors.  It’s a morning sunny extension to the house and there is a Bougainvillea, lemon and orange tree that seem to suffer the worst.  There looks to be a sap like residue on the leaves and the green insects are on the underside of the leaves? I bought some lacewing from you guys last year but need to be sure that I am getting the right predator for them? “ Andrew by email

A. Thanks for the message and these are aphids. They are the small green insects and they suck the sap from the plant which makes the plant ill plus they then excrete the excess sap they consume as a sticky honeydew which drips onto the lower leaves and leaves them sticky. Also as the aphids grow they shed their skins which dry out and drop on top the leaves and get stuck to the stocky honey dew which is the papery deposits on the tops of the leaves. You could do with a two pronged approach :-

1. Spray 1^st with natrural SB Invigorator Spray to kill as many of the aphids as you can and to wash away the sticky honey dew.
2. Then introduce an aphid predator to control any aphids left behind and to give on-going control. Lacewings are good but once they have eaten everything they will move away whereas a specific aphid predator will give on-going control so I would recommend the Aphid Predator Mix .

To find out more about controlling aphids under-glass, please CLICK HERE to see our range of predators, etc