Ladybug success...or maybe not

[lesa]

Perfect! Any improvement of the aphid situation?

 

[thistlebloom]

Perfect! Any improvement of the aphid situation?

I'll have a look see this evening. I noticed a bunch of ants trailing up and down the trunk so I put wood ash around the base. I heard that ants will stay out of ash because they can't move it (?). At any rate I may not have put it deep enough because they are still going up the trunk.

Last night I was epsom salting everything and tossed some around the apple trees, and kind of gave that tree a thicker band to infuriate the ants. This a.m. I looked to see if they were wading through it and saw that the little buggers have a nest under a few of the rocks at the base, so I lifted the rocks and stirred things up for them. We'll see if they packed up and left tonight when I go out to feed.

 

[thistlebloom]

To answer your question @lesa , there doesn't appear to be any appreciable difference in the aphid population on my heavily infested apple tree.
In fact I can no longer see any adult ladybugs or larvae or pupae.

What's up with that?

I did however find a pupating ladybug on one of my unknown apple trees up front.
Maybe they all moved up there where there are very few aphids disturbing the trees. Maybe they have aphidaphobia?

Another weird thing to me is that the tree in back that is an aphid habitat is 10 feet away from a different variety that has very little to no aphids. I wish I remembered what the varieties were. I know one is a Honeycrisp, just not which one.

 

[ninnymary]

Well, that's not good news Thistle. I have an aphid infestation also on my bamboo and was hoping those darn ladybugs would be the answer. The bamboo is too tall for me to spray.

Mary

 

[lesa]

Hmm... seemed so promising. Mother nature just has her own ideas about how these things work!