Dealing with Aphids

There is nothing more that I hate than garden pests trying to catch a free ride. Not only do they harm your plants but you have to make sure you don't eat them, too!

I recently had some issues with my tomato plants and I couldn't figure out why they were beginning to curl and wilt, until I flipped over the leaves. And there they were aphids all over them!

I have read that many tomato plants from the nursery will likely have an aphid trying to catch a ride on them (something I will look for next season!) I also ready that a contributing factor to my aphid kingdom is due to the fertilizer I used. Sounds like these little buggers tend to show up when using liquid fertilizer (i.e. not time-released fertilizer such as a fertilizer spike.) So as I thought I was helping my tomatoes by feeding them, it appears it is also what lead to their aphid infestation.

Fortunately having aphids is not necessarily a death sentence for your tomato plants. There are various products out there designed to kill the aphids. If you try to be a little more "green" these days I used a squirt of Dawn soap in a squirt bottle of regular water. My goal was to wet the leaves to the point of dripping and if the spray of water knocked them off their perch, so be it.

With a day or two all that was left was dried aphid bodies on the backsides of the leaves. I continue to monitor them daily and if I see any I grab my squirt bottle and attack.

It remains to be seen the outcome of my sickly tomato plants that were affected (about 2 of 14 plants) which isn't terrible if it wasn't for the fact the two varieties were heirlooms that I only had one plant of each.