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Aphid help?

I just spent about 2 hours plucking aphids off my sundew today, am I wasting my time? Is it even possible to just simply pick off all of the aphids?
I noticed they like to hide near the flower stalk and underside of leaves, but I'm sure they are else where also. I'm considering the 'dunk' method as I really don't want to have to use pesticides. Will this method hurt the flower stalk? Any other non-chemical ways of getting rid of these things?
 
You should just get insecticides, you wont be able to pluck every single aphid off. Of course if you can find a bag of ladybugs for sale that would be a chemical free alternative, but lots of the ladybugs would get trapped :lol:
 
You can use a water spray bottle set on needle/stream and blast the aphids off. Just move to an area remote to where you normally keep your plants so they don't re-infest. You'll have to repeat this many times but it can be done. A lot less labor intensive and more efficient than plucking them off with tweezers. If you have a couple spray bottles you can have a water fight with your kids or siblings later too, just for fun.

It's probably warm enough on Oahu that the aphids are not in the egg laying stage of reproduction which should aid your efforts with physical removal.

Immersing the plants completely under water for several days shouldn't hurt anything unless the seed capsule is close to being ripe enough to split open. How effective this method is remains to be seen. I'm not convinced it is all that effective. The plant will have a bedraggled drowned rat look for a while until it can replace the washed off dew.

Another method that has been used is to fumigate with CO2. Put the plant in an airtight container with a small chunk of dry ice. Leave the cover off for awhile so the CO2 will displace the air in the container then seal it. Put the whole thing in the dark will prevent photosynthesis from making O2 from the CO2. If you are careful to keep the splatter from getting on the plant, medium or pot you can probably generate enough CO2 to do the job from baking soda and vinegar.

Ladybugs will only stick around if there is enough of a food source to make it worth their while. The aphids on one sundew is not likely to meet their threshold. Probably a waste of money.

A systemic insecticide applied carefully to the crown of the plant should work but it will take several days or even a week or two to have an effect. The insecticide has to be absorbed by the plant and circulated.

See this video for some recommendations:
<iframe width="480" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/lbRCdJ8ZNF0?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
 
I would highly recommend buying Neem Oil, which basically acts to make them forget to eat and breed. It takes some time but it does the job.
 
I was afraid to use neem on my dews for fear that it would burn them. I didn't like the idea of submerging them, either, for fear of the same thing. They seem to burn for me if I even mist them, let alone submerge them. I tried submerging a Utric for 3 days, didn't work. So I don't trust that method at all anyway. I tried one of the products in the video NaN posted, Bayer Rose and Flower (imidacloprid). That was very successful for me. They were attacking the different varieties of D. capensis I have in the minibog as well as the VFTs. I tried to spray just on the crown of the plants, so that none of the chemical contacted any of the parts that I was worried would burn. Some of the plants kind of died back a bit in the long run (nothing extreme), but ended up sending up new growth within a couple weeks. All the aphids are long gone.
 
I just spent about 2 hours plucking aphids off my sundew today, am I wasting my time? Is it even possible to just simply pick off all of the aphids?
I noticed they like to hide near the flower stalk and underside of leaves, but I'm sure they are else where also. I'm considering the 'dunk' method as I really don't want to have to use pesticides. Will this method hurt the flower stalk? Any other non-chemical ways of getting rid of these things?

I had a problem with these this summer on capensis and filiformis and used a systemic insecticide with Imidcloprid as active ingredient sparingly on the crowns and the new leaves came up looking just fine and I had no more trouble with those nasty critters all summer.
 
Whew! Some good news, hopefully no eggs yet, I am learning to appreciate the heat lol.
I'm ditching the immersion method and will try the spray bottle tomorrow. If the water spray doesn't work then I'll pick up systemic insecticide. The video was very informative, and clears up the fears I had about using insecticides. Also, I knew that putting vinegar and baking soda together created bubbling, but didn't know that it generates CO2! Thank you very much!
 
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