Why so many aphids this year?

goodness gracious & there was me thinking we had it bad!

 

I haven't seen a single aphid in my garden, I feel so deprived!

 

Jeepers!!!!

 

Aphids, what are they?

 

What's them merleworld? They don't look like aphids to me.

 

Baby aphids :



Mahdahlia and Sheal - happy to send you some if you're feeling deprived

 

It's okay Merleworld, thanks for the offer but you can keep them. I'll just continue the battle with the slugs and snails.

 

I've certainly seen more aphids around the garden this year. I normally have plenty of aphid predators too, hoverflies and ladybirds in particular, but there's been a noticeable absence of both so far.

However, yesterday I spotted the first hoverfly and just this evening I saw a couple of ladybirds, so it looks as if the cavalry's arrived at last!

 

we now have 'black fly' moving in to join the green ones...oh joy!

 

We don't have as many aphids as a few weeks ago, but still too many, especially on the new growth on the plum tree. However we do now have a lot of hoverflies in the garden and when watering at dusk I have seen quite a few lacewings, especially round the plum tree. The sparrows are also having a munch on the aphids on the plum tree so I do have 'natural' predators having a go

Somewhat worrying is that I still haven't seen any more ladybirds since my last post in this thread 3 weeks ago , surely they should be thriving in these warm weather conditions?

 

I've got a few ladybugs in my front garden now, but only one I've seen in the back garden where all the aphids are. Or were, as I haven't seen any for a while and the plague seems to have gone away.

 

Blue Tits will have had a lot of them while feeding their young.

Saw my first Ladybird of the year today, and the Honeybees have finally found the Borage patch