Greenfly

My roses are covered in greenfly but because I get lots of visiting birds I do not want to use a pesticide, apart from spraying with the hose or squishing is there anything else I can do? tia

 

I usually leave mine and find nature soon intervenes. I’m not convinced that they do much damage. My Desdemona buds were all covered with greenfly but are now in full glorious flower.

 

I just leave mine to get on with it. My roses were “standing room only” with aphids a few weeks ago. Now they are rattling with ladybirds and there are only aphid husks to be seen. Plus the bluetits and so on have lots of tiny mouths to feed and they are busy clearing the rose buds too. Yes, the aphids left a lot of honeydew on the rose plants but it is due to rain soon and I imagine that will clean most of it off. Although we do have ants in the garden, I haven’t been aware of them milking the aphids much at all this year. No idea why.

 

I haven’t seen as many ants either @Tidemark I wonder if the wet autumn-winter has reduced numbers?

 

Spray with water and liquid soap solution. You will have to look up the ratio as I made mine to strong once and killed the bugs but the rose also lost all its leaves. The rose recovered the next year.

 

@Butterfly6 I think the ants are all in SW France!

 

I have rescued several of these little 'babies' from the top of my dustbin - suspect they have fallen out of the bird cherry growing near by - and I have not as yet noticed too many aphids.

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I have masses of them too, they keep hitching a ride into the house on me. I discovered one when it was tickling my neck, and another when it started crawling over my glasses.