Grow Your Own Magazine

I have a beautiful climbing rose outside my front door and I've noticed its absolutely covered in greenfly - you can't see the new stem growth in places for them. Does anyone have any tried and tested methods of getting rid of them please - organic if possible please.
Thanks
Clare

A pressure hose can knock a good few of them off, or you could use a soft soap solution (fairy liquid is also good - depends on how organic you want to be). Your garden centre will probably have some organic sprays.

I have seen quite a few laybirds around lately (in my garden anyway), if you have lots of spare time you could collect ladybirds and place them on your rose, but there's no guarantee they'll stay there! There's no point in buying natural predators at this time of year (to introduce artificially) as its still too cold for most of them.

If its just one isolated plant and you want to remove the aphids i would use a non-organic spray and just spray the aphids directly, avoiding getting it anywhere else, but thats me.

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There's vegetable growing in the family, but I must be adopted
Happy Gardening!

I usually go for a washing water type spray - don't know if it's important but I use Ecover anyway which I guess would be better for the environment. If it's just the odd plant I also try to squash a fair few between my fingers and then squirt at the others. Seems to help a lot.

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Some of us live in the past, always talking about back then. Some of us live in the future, always planning what we are going to do. And, then there are those, who neither look behind or ahead, but just enjoy the moment of right now.

Which one are you and is it how you want to be?

I agree with Alison, we spray our greenfly/blackfly with a dilute Ecover solution - I figure if its okay for our 'mugs & plates', its okay for the flowers & veggies! Works quite well.

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Manda.

"Wouldn't it be nice
For maybe an hour
To not have a care."

Greenfly so soon - guess another 'gift' of global warming

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Denise xox

Learn from the mistakes of others because you'll never live long enough to make them all yourself.
-- Alfred E. Neumann
http://irchesterplot.blogspot.com

we do the ecover thing too, also water with the washing mashine water, (ecover their as well ) saves water and stops greenfly no enviro damage.

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Yo an' Bob
Walk lightly on the earth
take only what you need
give all you can
and your produce will be bountifull

Thats great thank you - we only use Ecover stuff at home too so I shall make a solution up and give them a blast.
Clare

I used to have a really bad blackfly problem. I managed to get rid of that by getting rid of the ants, which "farm" the blackfy and presumably greenfly. Trouble is I tried lots of eco-friendly ways of trying to dissuade the ants but the only thing that worked was ant powder - not so "green".
Jools

We've got greenfly on roses too...I've been herding up the ladybirds and putting them on task. Oh, and they're already making baby-ladybirds too....very enthusiastically

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

here's the solution to your greenfly (in theory). In practise (practice?) mine seem to be allergic to greenfly. I put them all on, and they jump off asap. Other things on their minds than feeding, methinks

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

The best cure for greenfly on roses, and we have a lot of roses is to do nothing!!!!!

The lacewings and ladybirds soon cotton on and get hoovering them up as do blue tits etc. Any sprays, organic or not dont differentiate between goddies and baddies, they kill the lot leaving plenty of room for more baddies to arrive.

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Kindest regards, David.

http://pigletsplots.blogspot.com/
updated - Sunday 19th at 2100hrs

If there are a few badly infested bits I chop them off and destroy.

I have two climbing roses side by side, same variety. One gets heavily infested with greenfly and the other hardly gets any!

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You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
Max Ehrmann, Desiderata

blog: http://allyheebiejeebie.blogspot.com/ and my (basic!) page: http://www.allythegardener.co.uk/