Aphids!!

Got up this morning and headed out to weed the garden.  For some reason I looked at one of our 2-year-old cherry trees to see if cherries were visible yet and I saw something bad.  Really bad.  The bottoms of most of the newer leaves were black.  Like dirt had been sprayed up under them.

Upon closer look, I saw that several ladybugs were present on the tree as well as ants.  And a few of the black dirt spots were developing wings - aphids!

I don't like to spray insecticides - they tend to kill of of the bugs, not just the bad ones - the spiders, ladybugs and ants can stay.  But the aphids had to go.

So I got out the best tool I could think of - my fingers.  I went branch by branch and squished as many of the little buggers as I could and then sprayed them off with my hose.  It took an hour and a half to remove the majority of the infestation.  Believe me, I have no illusions that I got rid of them all.

I literally had blood on my hands!  But aside from using insecticides, I couldn't think of what would do as thorough a job.  I just read where garlic is a good companion plant for cherry trees.  Not sure if I can still plant garlic at this late date, but I think I'll try - even if it doesn't produce, it might help keep the pests at bay.

As I went through and got rid of the aphids, I marked each branch with a bread bag tie (being careful not to damage the branches) - it was confusing not knowing which ones I'd done already and this definitely helped.

As an interesting aside, I found 3 ladybugs together - I assume the males were fighting over the female - or there was something kinky going on.