Are these Aphids and How to Get Rid?

Hey everyone,

New planter here. I recently planted some apple and hazelnut trees (bare roots) that seem to be taking their first steps. Looks like I’m running into my first problem.

There are some tiny bugs concentrating around the small, newly formed green buds on my apple trees. I’m guessing they’re eating my plants.

What are they? Are they bad? And if so, how to I safely, preferably organically get rid of them? Will periodic application of peppermint spray work?

All help appreciated!

Hi Jordan,
I will start by saying that I am not a bug expert. I'm just replying while we wait for the real experts :)

At least one of them looks like an aphid to me. If they are aphids, the fastest, easiest, and least toxic way is just with high pressure water. Just get a hose nozzle that can do the single focused spray instead of a shower. And spray them off.

Jordan,

Yep, just wipe them off, they die really easily. My understanding however, is that aphids tend to attack plants that are not thriving. Try an application of compost, work castings, or companion plants for your apple trees.

Sometimes the best answer is to do nothing.....

I suggest that you wait and observe. Watch for wasps and ladybird larvae to come and hoover them up - that'll boost the predator population and reduce the aphid burden next year.
If you have space, plant flowering plants like fennel and daisies to attract more beneficial insects like hoverflies. Their larvae also are great for aphid control and are also good pollinators for many flowers (so you get a better fruit crop too!)

source

Thank you, all!

I have a couple of companion plants that I’ve read have a repellent effect on certain insects. There’s garlic that just started sprouting bedded around the apple trees. I have marigold, nasturtium, and dill in the ground nearby that should be sprouting in the coming week. Also, I have fennel seeds going in the ground likely today.

I’m hoping that once a more robust community of plants with beneficial properties takes off, I won’t see pests like this. Again, newbie gardener. No surprise these guys are after the apple trees when there no existing line of defense.

Masanobu Fukuoka is a huge inspiration, so the advice to do nothing is well-heeded. Probably best to watch and understand my land.

Best!

Nancy Reading wrote:Sometimes the best answer is to do nothing.....

I suggest that you wait and observe. Watch for wasps and ladybird larvae to come and hoover them up - that'll boost the predator population and reduce the aphid burden next year.
If you have space, plant flowering plants like fennel and daisies to attract more beneficial insects like hoverflies. Their larvae also are great for aphid control and are also good pollinators for many flowers (so you get a better fruit crop too!)

Do nothing but also do all the things. Look up Integrated Pest Management and you will find that most control methods don't have anything to do with direct control. As already mentioned, have healthy plants (compost, manure, mulch, properly sized planting holes, proper watering first year), have healthy environment (plant diversity, ecosystem diversity, insect diversity), have insect habitat. Nature will control the aphids, but there is no need to completely get rid of them.

The Do Nothing part is important to all of this as well. I personally witnessed an aphid boom on some young peaches early in my gardening journey. 7 days later there was a fog of lacewings in the orchard massacring the aphids, followed by ladybugs, followed by bluebirds setting up residence. Over the course of 2 months, all of this came and went in a wave and left me with only peach leaf curl left to contend with (this I did need to control directly with milk and garlic spray for a couple years). The experience was a very in-my-face lesson on patience and observation. Other times in my journey I have Done Nothing and watched things fail, but learned valuable lessons in why and how in the meantime - sometimes a specific plant isn't supposed to be in a specific place and you just haven't figured out why yet.

I am not sure about aphids. They usually suck saps rather than eating a hole out of the new bud as in the picture. Also I seem to see borer hole on the twig. I would spay soapy water over the surface and see if anything is coming out.

Is the picture eggs or larva?  Looks like eggs to me.  Soap or oil treatments likely best answer.  Is it leaf bud or blossom bud? is the other question I suppose should be asked.  Often eggs on the surface of a blossom lead to a borer who will end up inside with the fruit so if this year matters needs to be fought before they get inside

What works best for you depends on your context and goals. Eg if you are setting up a Mark Shepard style semi-wild food forest by mass planting of hundreds of trees grown from seed with diverse genetics, deliberately putting in 3-5x more trees than you plan to end up with after 10 years, then under that approach you very likely want to do nothing; for all the reasons some folks here mentioned (getting predator population balance quickly, etc) and more.

But if you are putting in a dozen carefully selected fruit trees of specific cultivars, that you spent a lot of money on, chosen to be able to pollinate each other, such that every single tree in your system is precious… then “do nothing” has a high risk of leading to a very disappointing and frustrating result.


For the section of my land where my goal is closer to that second scenario, I take an incremental approach… eg I might blast them off with a hose to give the plant a reprieve. But I won’t use any chemicals or “organic” remedies to nuke them off. And I’d watch the situation closely, because even in that “every tree is precious” scenario I still want to allow the natural balance of predators to come in.
But to keep the plants alive until it does, I’ll do things like buy and release ladybug larvae, spray rosemary and dust diatomaceous earth on the bases of plants where ants are defending the aphids, and hose caterpillars off the plants… for the first couple of years, until things find their balance.