The underside of this eggplant leaf is absolutely coated in aphids. Argh!
Time has been flying by here on the farm, which causes a lot of things on the “to-do” list to go without being “to-done”. Thus, we neglected to observe the golden rule of using floating row cover: every once in a while, make sure to take a look at what’s going on under it!
I usually try to peek under the floating row cover at least once a week to make sure that the plants growing under it haven’t gotten smothered by weeds or attacked by pests. However, I let a couple of weeks go by without looking at my eggplants, and all the aphids for miles around must have known that they had free rein.
I literally cried out in defeat when I lifted the row cover and saw how many aphids had found their dream home on the leaves of my eggplants. The sight of them was discouraging but, hopefully I can use some aphid control strategies to rid my plants of these sap-sucking pests.
My strategy is three-fold, and I have enacted two parts of it:
1. Remove the row cover and let aphid-eating beneficial insects get rid of the aphids for me.
2. Smush as many aphids as possible (this is gross, but it really works), and rinse the remainder of them off of the plant leaves with a fairly strong stream of water from a garden hose.
If the first two parts of my strategy fail, I plan to spray the plants with a certified organic pesticide called Pyganic, which is a pyrethrin-based insecticide that is made from chrysanthemum plants. Although pyrethrin is a naturally-derived substance, it is still very toxic to humans and wildlife, so I use it very sparingly.
