Grow Your Own Magazine

excuse my spelling. Having seen the news this morning and the attack of the aphids on leilandii (is that correct), i need all the help and advice i can get.
We are grubbing out our road side hedge and replacing it with leilandii, my husband will keep it trim not to worry there, how do i stop these aphids and will they attack them while they are still in ther pots as we have not planted them yet, all help would be very gratfully recieved

Plagues of aphids turn leylandii brown in Britain's gardens as climate change starts to bite | Mail Online

If there are brown patches on your conifers, consider aphids. leylandii can be badly damaged by the cypress aphid. Watch too for aphids on juniper, cedar, pine and for black spruce aphid on the bark of mature spruce trees.

Check behind the shoot tips for signs of aphid activity such as mottling, yellowing and "sticky" foliage. Also look for sooty mould; a superficial black mould. Control at the first sign of damage with products containing acetamiprid (Scotts Bug Clear Ultra for Flowering Plants), bifenthrin (Doff All-In-One Garden Pest Killer), thiacloprid (Bayer Provado Ultimate Bug Killer Concentrate) or imidacloprid (Bayer Provado Ultimate Bug Killer).

Do not confuse aphids with harmless barklice. These aphid-sized insects, both winged and wingless, are generally brownish-white in colour. They run rapidly over the foliage and stems, unlike the slow-moving aphids.

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~ What do I think of Western civilisation? I think it would be a very good idea ~ Gandhi

Typical poor Mail reporting. How can this be climate change when there was an outbreak of equal magnitude 26 years ago?

Anyway, I'm hoping to use this as an excuse to get rid of mine since many are showing the tell tale brown patches; they are a pain to cut too. Despite clipping them hard they will still put on an inch a year and mine are over 8' now (they came with the house . You can't cut them down again as it takes years for the tops to fill in again.

I think beech hedges are much nicer.

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Mark

Vegetable Kingdom blog

I wouldn't miss Leylandii if they died out overnight. What species do they support, apart from woodpigeons and aphids?

Almost any other hedge is nicer.

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~ What do I think of Western civilisation? I think it would be a very good idea ~ Gandhi

Well I do get a lot of birds nesting in them.

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Mark

Vegetable Kingdom blog

a squirrals dray,lol,we cut 3 very large ones down,and discovered where the little critters had been nesting,we did not know until the laylandi was down,oh deary me,and the most suprising thing was,how big it was,and what flippin rubbish they had collected,plastic bag bits included,we also would not miss them,neither would the neighbours who's gardens they were shading

I feel the same about Leylandii - hate the things, too big for the average garden and need loads of maintenance to keep at a reasonable height. Their intended height is 40 or 50 feet!!!!!

However, as to species supported - my friend has a Leylandii hedge right down one side of her garden (courtesy of the nextdoorneighbours) and the sparrows love it. Looks like a sparrow high rise block of flats, little heads poking out all over the place like people looking out of windows.