Corylus Contorta - Greenfly infestation

hairynipple

This is the tree

http://www.finegardening.com/plantguide/corylus-avellana-contorta-harry-lauders-walking-stick.aspx

Only in the house for the past 3 years. This potentially beautiful tree gets riddled with greenfly. The leaves are curled up and there are hundreds of leaves. If i pick out a random leaf and open it up theres bound to be a little greenfly in there.

Any advise on how to prevent this with out opening up every leaf and spraying washing up liquid mix, which would take forever

Supercell

If its that bad you probably want something systemic rather than just washing liquid. Pain in the arse to spray but it will clear them off the plant for a while and give it a chance to recover.
Planting lots of bee friendly flowers too might help attract predators that eat the aphids. I hate the little buggers, they already tried to attack an apple tree i moved last winter. I sprayed it with Bayer Provado and have planted Foxgloves near it in the hope that attracts bees and other insects that like to eat the swines by the time it wears off.

padi89

I just spray them off with the hose obviously not too strong a jet just enough to dislodge and lessen their numbers.
If you want to attract in hover flies to predate on them sow poached egg plant seeds. They are very easy from seed (too easy) the hover flies go nuts for them.

fryup

is vinegar any good for killing greenfly?

magicbastarder

hairynipple wrote: »

The leaves are curled up and there are hundreds of leaves. If i pick out a random leaf and open it up theres bound to be a little greenfly in there.

i know this is a near six year old post - but the leaves of curly hazel curl up anyway.
and finding 'a little greenfly' on a leaf is certainly no sign of an infestation!

Day Lewin

I was amazed by the tree being "in the house"

Surely this is not an indoor plant? That would be much warmer than such a plant needs: and of course, aphids thrive indoors.

The cold winters and outdoor breezes should be enough to deter greenfly.

Or ladybirds - and there's quite a baby-boom of ladybirds going on right now.

macraignil

fryup wrote: »

is vinegar any good for killing greenfly?

I've seen people trying to advertise using vinegar as a weed killer so it might kill the plants before it kills any green fly. I remember working for a seed producers in Surrey in the UK and being sent out with old jam jars to search in the areas of long grass and nettles for ladybirds to bring in to the polytunnels to eat the aphids on some of the seed crops. Apparently when it was close to the crop setting seed the normal insecticides could not be used as they would damage the seed crop too much.


Noticed good numbers of ladybirds in the garden this year so far which hopefully is a good sign for most of the green fly getting controlled naturally this year.

fryup

where can i get ladybirds? native irish ladybirds mind

looksee

Do you have kids? Could you borrow some? They are nearer to the ground and great at spotting ladybirds. A bit of park or woodland should provide ladybirds, there are a lot this year, we have seen clusters of a dozen or so recently. Putting them on a plant in the house though, not so sure that will work.

fryup

but isn't there some garden centres selling them?

Lumen

fryup wrote: »

but isn't there some garden centres selling them?

From May...

https://www.mrmiddleton.com/mr-middletons-ladybirds/

New Home

I'm probably wrong about it, but aren't those arlequin ladybirds? If so, they're on the invasive species list on Biodiversity Ireland.

Lumen

New Home wrote: »

I'm probably wrong about it, but aren't those arlequin ladybirds? If so, they're on the invasive species list on Biodiversity Ireland.

Don't think so, they're two spots.

This is the harlequin:

fryup

40 quid for 25 ladybirds, bit steep........but will they stay? will they be around the next year?