名媛直播

Hello,

I finally received a new Chinese Elm. It is beautiful but it is full of aphids and I cannot for the life of me get rid of them.
I sit with a flashlight nightly picking these bugs off, I have also sprayed the tree down with water in the sink. Nothing is working, I want to use a insecticidal soap, but I am afraid of killing the tree. Anyone else have other solutions?

Thank you,

N

Aphids are brought back every night by ants. Picking them off helps a couple of hours.

Put a tray out with a rock to hold the pot, fill the tray with water, and put the pot on the rock. The ants can't swim across the water and can't bring aphids over.

Are you keeping the tree indoors or outdoors? The ant problem is very common reason for aphids in outdoor cultivation.

Indoors there are most often no ants. But anyway it seems like most plants are more often affected by aphids indoors. The solution is to move the tree outside. In many cases the aphids just dissapear by next rain.

Take a spray bottle, fill with water. Add a shotglass of cleaning alcohol and two spoons of dishwashing liquid. Soak the tree. In half an hour the aphids are dead.

Tropfrog wrote:
Indoors there are most often no ants..

Every fall when I move the outdoor trees indoors I fight aphids all winter. Moving outdoors in the spring they go away.

This is an indoor tree. No ants in the house, I thoroughly look at each leaf, and the dirt around the tree but they keep coming back. This tree came with a caterpillar in the leaves also, that I had to get rid of. I was wary about moving the tree outdoors because I live in FL and its 90+ degrees every day.

Ivan Mann wrote:

Tropfrog wrote:
Indoors there are most often no ants..

Every fall when I move the outdoor trees indoors I fight aphids all winter. Moving outdoors in the spring they go away.

Excactly! I got myself a 5c overwintering room. Since then no aphids at all on any tree. And we have a lots of ants here.

That is really great. I never thought that an overwintering room would do the trick.

Ncane wrote: This is an indoor tree.

That is your problem. Keeping it indoors weakens a plant. That opens a window of opportunity for many plants.

The heat is not an issue, but be wary of sunburn. Just like you cannot spend weeks inside and then go in full sun, trees need adjustment there too.

Where are you located?