Our garden has been growing great all years, and our one raised bed with lettuce, broccoli. pak choi. and Brussels sprouts was doing great!!
The raised bed next to it has mustard greens growing and I noticed some grey spots on some stems and snipped them off and assumed it was bugs, specifically Aphids.
I walked over to the next raised bed (pretty much just a giant brassicas bed) to inspect closer and noticed it's ALL OVER THEM.
Safe to assume these are cabbage Aphids and everything in this bed is toast? I don't know if any of this is salvageable
by pekoepie
31 Comments
Hose em off with your highest setting. Looks like your broccoli bolted already anyway.
Ladybugs
Hose it off. Then Pyganic (or your spray of choice) 3-4 days in a row. With that many it’s going to take several days to break their life cycle.
That’s what is known as an infestation. Use a shop vac to get as many off as you can. Hose off remaining ones. Use insecticidal soap and garlic spray. Some people use Neem oil. But that infestation is pretty bad.
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You can get rid of them, OP. I believe in you. But holy moly.
Dish soap and water always works for me. Hand lather and rinse well
Oh my god how???
How did you sneak in and take pictures of my pumpkin plants ?
My chickens would be HYPE to get this little treat 😂
Mine got to this point, I pulled them all.
Though I had sprouting broccoli and was well past harvesting the main stalk.
I made the mistake of trying to grow Brussels in my garden this year. They were thriving despite the infestations! I ended up pulling them in July because I didn’t want them to destroy the rest of my plants. It did not help the problem, much. They moved to my asparagus ferns which are apparently hardy as hell, don’t care at all. The exoskeletons are covering my strawberries below the ferns now. On the bright side I have a bit of a ladybug infestation now, too!
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I’d be buying a bottle of raki and spraying that at this point. Wow.
Is this a joke?
Can you vacuum them first? Let me know if it works
Burn it. Trash
Just wondering if you used insect netting and they were able to get in?
Id bring out the shop vac… i have no other suggestions
You will never get them all. Toss it.
Anyone who says hose it off is on crack. That simply does not work. Don’t waste your time with the shop vac(lol, give me a break), soaps, etc. You’re welcome to continue fighting, but they will win. Best defense is prevention in the first place. Nothing you can do with an infestation of this magnitude.
I had a similar experience with my kale this year. Infestation much like yours. Take my advice and cut the loss so you can plant something new sooner than later 🙂
Gotta rotate those criciferious crop
Had this happen to brussel sprouts the one time I tried to grow them. I’m so sorry.
Sometimes I have a plant that is infested with aphids (though I’ve never seen one to this extent – pic 3 oh my god). I will often leave it and let nature do its thing. An increase in aphids can result in an increase in ladybugs, parasitic wasps, damsel bugs, hoverflies, etc coming into your garden and choosing it as their forever home.
Do you have many flowers in your garden? This’ll also help attract biological control!
jesus fuck man
I think it’s worth a try! I use diatomaceous earth. Mine weren’t quite at your level (eew) but I had a few impressive clusters, especially earlier in the season. DE also kills ants, which farm aphids, and can improve soil. Its great stuff! It’s fairly cheap and is okay for organic gardens. Do wear a mask when you apply though! They don’t, and that’s a big no-no. Who wants microscopic abrasive sea creatures in their lungs?
Here’s a video link about what it does and how to apply it.
https://youtu.be/DXTMizlOhTQ?si=D_A6fCDC713a-xi9
Huh. Guess they don’t do links?
Goshen Farm and Gardens is the name of the channel in case the link doesn’t work
Where I am, we get these occasionally on brassicas. It’s only ever one plant, I don’t know how the aphids decide which one to colonize haha. I have three 40’ rows of Brussels sprouts in my garden rn, and I went out last week and found one random plant in the middle of a row getting eaten alive. I sprayed the whole thing down with a household cleaner because it was the first thing that came to hand, and a couple thorough doses of that seemed to knock them dead pretty effectively. Any kind of dish soap you have, mixed with water, and put in a spray bottle should get the job done just as well It’s all about the surfactant. 🙂 Just be sure you get ALL the surfaces with bugs on them thoroughly covered in soap, both tops and bottoms of the leaves. Also, be aware that the infested plant won’t ever thrive, so unless you’re very close to harvest it might be best to just pull the whole thing up and toss it. (Always kill any pest bugs before you pull up a plant though— no sense in giving them a free ride around your garden).
My Brussels sprouts looked like this by the end too. We gave up and tore them out last week, but only because the actual sprouts weren’t growing. Everything around them in the garden was absolutely fine.
You have a good trap plant now. They get into our kale every damn year, we usually spray them with high pressure on the hose once a week. It doesn’t get rid of them but it curbs them and slows them a bit. There’s just too many plants and pests for us to focus too much, especially this late in the season. It’s hose and survival of the fittest now. It depends how much sanity you want to invest. If they are spreading I’d toss but if they keep to the same spot at least they’re not on other stuff.
The hell! That cabbage belongs to them now.
How many lady bugs can you hire for the weekend??!!
So, my kale was like that last year. I left them and let them overwinter. The birds went to town on them during the winter and the kale I planted this year barely have aphids at all.
So maybe leave the cabbage and see what happens.
I grow kale every year as a sacrifice to the aphids, so they leave my other plants alone. They are so hard to get rid of!