Your plants are full of black and green spots and there are also ants in large quantities? Take a good look. These are aphids. This is what you can do about it and so soft soap helps against aphids.
Do you love your plants? Unfortunately, you are not alone in this. Green and black aphids see it quite the same way. Starting in April, the little beasts make life difficult for us gardeners. Their existence reaches its peak in June.
But you don't have to resort to chemicals to rid your plants of them.
Best of all helps soft soap against aphids. All natural and without side effects.
Although the aphid is tiny, it can cause very great damage. If only one louse came along, none of this would be a problem. The problem is that it never appears alone, but always in masses.
Within a very short time, the aphid multiplies rapidly. It feeds on the plant sap and can ensure that some plants do not survive the invasion.
Just the other day my chamomile was afflicted by a large plague. Chemistry was out of the question, after all, I want to make tea from the chamomile later. But fortunately soft soap helps against aphids. I'll tell you how.
Table of contents
When should I use soft soap against aphids?
Whether it's a houseplant or a garden plant, the little sucking insects don't care. They fill their bellies on pretty much any plant - from lettuce, cucumber, rose, elderberry to flowers. The problem is that they do enormous damage to the plant.
In the apartment you want the animals even less than in the garden. After all, outdoors they have natural predators such as ladybugs, hoverflies or earwigs.
As long as there are only a few isolated lice, this is not a problem outdoors. Nature takes care of it itself.
However, it can also happen that the aphid population explodes and suddenly there are hardly any plants left to be seen because of all the aphids.
Then you need to act quickly. The faster you react, the better it is for your plants.
The solution? Soft soap! It is absolutely non-toxic, but very effective.
How to fight powdery mildew in the garden!
For indoor plants
Aphids are a typical problem with houseplants. You don't want them there, but you don't have to wait for a miracle either. They will not disappear! Rather, they multiply quickly once they've taken up residence, so it's entirely possible for a plant to be completely sucked dry.
You should not expect help from nature. Birds, ladybugs, spiders and other helpers do not come into the house to support you.
So you have to intervene yourself to ensure healthy plants. Houseplants can be cleaned with a toothbrush or soft soap can be used against aphids.
In the garden
You can also use soft soap against aphids in the garden. Since it is a natural product, you can use it to treat vegetable plants, fruit trees and ornamental plants. Spray the soft soap on the plant and not on the fruit itself.
Wash everything you have treated with it very thoroughly before you eat it. Do not use soft soap in the garden until you have tried it with tape. This is because aphids serve as food for many insects - most notably ladybug larvae.
Before I spray the plants with the soapy water, I take a tape. Depending on how fine the plant parts are, I wrap it around two fingers or the whole hand.
Dab the plant with the sticky side. This way you remove a part of the aphids. Then use the soft soap against aphids.
What soft soap against aphids?
Soft soaps (potash soap) or curd soaps are bars of soap without added fat. They are available in liquid or solid form. They do not contain fragrances or colorants. Soft soap consists of potassium salts of saponified fats (historically are often linseed oil, hemp oil or rapeseed oil).
We recommend you to use liquid soft soap, because it dissolves well even in lukewarm water. Its consistency is similar to that of a thick cream. If you decide to use the solid soap, you will have to dissolve it in hot water and then let it cool down. Never apply a warm soft soap solution against aphids to the plants.
If the soap meets these criteria, you can use it:
- biodegradable,
- fragrance or fragrance-free,
- pH-neutral
- Plant based
What you must not use are dishwashing detergents, shower gels etc. They harm your plants, the ecosystem and contain microplastics.
You can buy soft soap at the drugstore or order it online and be prepared against a louse invasion at any time.
Important: Use an all-natural, plant-based soft soap. After all, soft soap is often used for cleaning and is therefore mixed with fragrances and other ingredients.
Make sure there is 100% vegetable oil in the soap or your plants won't forgive you.
No later than the next rain or wind aphids simply fall off.
Tip: gardening naturally
Try to swing the chemical club as rarely as possible. There are many ways to get rid of pests with natural tricks.
Master gardener Fiona Kiss has written a very special guide. She is an expert in organic plant protection and gives you in her book "The handbook for plant protection in the organic garden". best tips against absolutely any plague.
You will find tips against fungi, viruses and insects that make your life in the garden and in the apartment difficult.
How does soft soap against aphids?
Soft soap helps against aphids, in which the solution puts a fine film around the animals. The lye coats the animals and plants with it, so you should use only a little. The soap makes the respiratory organs of the aphids stick together, which causes them to die. The next day you can rinse them off with the garden hose or dab them with tape.
Advantages
- simple application
- it is a cheap home remedy
- Soft soap is environmentally friendly
What are the disadvantages?
It is important to know that the soft soap suds act not only against aphids, but also beneficial insects: When they are covered with the film, they suffocate as well as the pests. To avoid this, the agent is best used in the evening hours, when the beneficial insects are usually asleep.
Another disadvantage is that in most cases a single application is not enough to eliminate all aphids. As a rule, the infested plants must be sprayed several times to be effective. I therefore regularly combine tape and spray solution.
On very hardy plants like palms, you can also remove the aphids with an old toothbrush before using the spray bottle.
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How do I make a soft soap solution?
Your aphid solution consists of 3% soft soap and 97% water.
You will need: 30 ml of soft soap, 1 liter of water, 1 spray bottle.
- Put the soft soap in a cup.
- Add about twice the amount of hot water.
- Mix soap and water until no soap bits are visible.
- Pour with cold water.
- Pour the lye into a spray bottle.
Ready! Shake the bottle and you're ready to go.
Important: Always mix the mixture fresh and consume it quickly. Only then can you be sure that it helps.
How to properly apply the aphid solution
Garden plants are sprayed directly. Indoor plants are best brought outdoors so that the lye does not land on furniture or walls.
Spray the top and bottom of the leaves of the affected plants.
Don't skip a spot.
Make sure that the solution can dry up. Do not spray before or after raining. The plant should be dry so that the lye can act.
Let the houseplant dry outside.
The interval between each treatment is 7 days. This prevents new aphids from settling. Depending on the infestation, two to three repetitions are necessary. Whereby it already gets much better with the first pass.
Continue to observe the plant.
Did you know that you can make fertilizer from nettles?
For particularly stubborn cases
Sometimes it can happen that there are so many aphids on the plants that you can not even see the plant itself. If this is the case with you, then you should definitely add alcohol to the water-soap mixture.
So soft soap is effective against aphids, blood, scale and mealybugs. And also against powdery mildew.
For 1 liter of soft soap solution add 2 tsp of alcohol. Put it in the spray bottle, shake and spray the plant.
How to recognize aphids?
So before you can take action against green or black aphids, you must first identify them. Not every aphid is automatically an aphid. Some species do not react at all to the soap, while it works immediately on others.
That's why you should take a close look at the problem.
An aphid is
- about 1-2 mm big
- green or black
- winged or unwinged
- always found in larger quantities
- especially like to find in large groups. The pests sit very close to each other on leaves and stems.
You can also see the infestation on the plant itself. It looks puny and really weak. The leaves curl up, change color, dry out or fall off.
By the way, if you have aphids on the tomatoes, you do not have to act. Tomatoes contain a built-in dirt mechanism. When the aphids suck on it, they die within a very short time, land on the ground and serve as food for the plant.
Our conclusion
If you use soft soap against aphids, you will quickly get rid of the small sucking pests. And in a very natural way, without harming the plants. Soft soap is a very inexpensive and biodegradable home remedy, which, by the way, is also wonderfully suitable for cleaning.
All the best for you and your plants! :)
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