Invasion of the Sap Suckers!

These aphids were on a blade of grass in a corner of my greenhouse. Very worrying as I was hoping to keep them out. I prefer my cabbages, pak choi, spinach and broccoli free of the blighters. Broccoli is especially disgusting when it is infested. So far they have only colonised the twitch that poked itself in from outside. The damage they have done to the leaf is obvious.

According to Andrew Crowe in Which New Zealand Insect? not only do they reproduce without fertilisation, but they do so at a fantastic rate. If it wasn’t for predation by ladybirds, praying mantids, birds etc., the descendants of one cabbage aphid in one year could weigh three times the the weight of the world’s human population. Go ladybirds!

Check them out large