Sprayed my Tomato Plants

4 Responses to Sprayed my Tomato Plants

1. laura rittenhouse says:

   May 8, 2011 at 1:47 am

   To deter aphids I also add a bit of garlic. It’s supposed to work, hasn’t for me. Or maybe it has and I’d be 3 feet deep in aphids if I didn’t. Anyway, I smash a clove of garlic and put it in the bottle with everything else. I sit it in the sun for a couple of days to ripen. Warning! If you crush the garlic it will clog your sprayer.

   Good luck and let me know how it goes.
2. Karen says:

   May 8, 2011 at 11:25 am

   Thanks for the heads-up about clogging the sprayer with garlic.

   I sprayed the 10 million aphids. (Where do they come from and how do they multiply so fast? I saw them, went inside and prepared the spray, went back outside and, I swear, there were 10 times as many!!!) The next day, no aphids!

   Day after that, they’re back. Sprayed again. This morning, no aphids. I’m fearing an ongoing pattern. How did I get by with not a single aphid last year on 6 different tomato plants? Maybe because it was clean soil and this year it’s full of my yard/kitchen compost??? Ugh.
3. laura rittenhouse says:

   May 8, 2011 at 7:10 pm

   Hey, you got rid of them for a day, you’re doing better than I.

   I’ll now tell you the trick that actually worked best. My roses were also infested and the sprays weren’t working (I think it’s smothers the poor little guys but doesn’t stop their cousins from moving in – which the garlic should do but….). I read somewhere that what deters aphids most is the smell of dead aphids (sensible creatures after all). So I would go out every morning and squish 10 million aphids. I appeased my conscience with the fact that I’d rather be squished to death than sprayed with something nasty that caused me to suffocate. Anyway, the aphids rarely appeard on the same shoot too soon after the squishing. Of course they were always back on new shoots and in a few days on the old ones but over time the roses thrived and the aphids vanished. My celery didn’t benefit from the squishing technique and remained stunted.

   Oh, and apparently rubbing the squished paste down the trunk of your plants prevents aphids from climbing up and moving around.

   No, I didn’t wear gloves and the smell and nicotine stained look don’t wash off too readily.

   The things we do to save our crops.
4. Karen says:

   May 8, 2011 at 7:33 pm

   You win.

   Don’t really want to try the whole squishing thing.

   But, thanks…

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