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Post by ottawagardener on Jun 9, 2009 8:09:48 GMT -5
I have a LOT of ants on my property so it is of no surprise that I also have my fair share of aphid farms. One has sprung up on my small Evans cherry tree (5 feet tall). Methods of treatment anyone? Soapy water spray?
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Post by bunkie on Jun 9, 2009 9:04:04 GMT -5
we have had ant problems on our dwarf fruit trees before. i used soapy water, but also put a small collar around the bottom of the tree....a plastic cottage cheese/yogurt/margarine-type container, cut and wrapped around the tree bottom in a cone shape, small at top and wide at bottom. the ants cannot climb the plastic and thus can't farm aphids on the tree. hope this helps.
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Post by PatrickW on Jun 9, 2009 9:40:22 GMT -5
I've never used it, but isn't there a kind of oil used on fruit trees for this kind of thing? You may need to apply it some other part of the year, so it may not help now. I'm afraid I don't have any really useful details here, but maybe someone else knows about this?
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Post by ottawagardener on Jun 9, 2009 11:44:08 GMT -5
Oh yeah, those are good ideas. I think there is something called tanglefoot for the tree. I'll have to look into what it's made of but the plastic container sound good too.
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Post by robertb on Jun 25, 2009 12:27:59 GMT -5
We had a large (20 foot) cherry outside the back door when I was a kid, it was so covered with blackfly every year that all the leaves used to curl up. It still produced masses of cherries.
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Post by ottawagardener on Jun 26, 2009 9:45:07 GMT -5
Robert: That's good to know. In fact, I've noticed that the aphid problem is getting a tad better. Maybe the ladybugs have gotten busy? My lupins, on the other hand, were destroyed by wooly aphid this year.
My suspicion is that when the city cut off about 1/3 of the branches on our Linden out front, they removed a good amount of overwintering lady bud larvae too as I've seen masses of them on that Linden. The very Linden, that also has masses of some type of aphid too...
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