I grow vegetables organically, this means with no chemicals but sometimes it is a challenge to keep the pests away from your prized vegetables.

I’ll be exploring a few different methods of pest control, some that I use in our vegetable plot.

Black fly, Green Fly and White Fly

Black fly, Green fly and White fly are a little coloured flies with transparent wings a also known as aphids. They colonise in their masses and can usually be found on the tips of Broad beans, tendrils of peas, under the leaves of sunflowers, tomato plants.

Black fly, Green fly and White fly love the juicy sap that comes out of new shoots and new flowering vegetables.

Can aphids and blackfly damage plants?

In enough numbers in their colonies, yes because they can de-stabilise plants and stunt their growth. The aphids can also spread diseases which can infect your plants.

Nature friendly ways of removing Black fly, Green fly and White fly

1. Spiders and their webs

By using other animals in the garden like spiders, we can make use of their handy webs. They can do all the hard work for you by catching some of your black fly before they make it to your plants.

For example my Pea wigwams and A-frames have been a safe haven for little spiders. They have formed a series of webs in amongst the twine and bamboo poles. These webs have trapped a number of blackfly so I have been careful not to break them when harvesting the peas as they are doing something for me and I am doing something for them. We are living in a symbiotic system.

2. Flowering vegetables that have bolted

It’s usual for some vegetables to bolt when the weather gets hot, the trick is to use these to your advantage to lure in the pests. The idea is the black fly sit on these flowers instead of on your vegetable plants.

I came across a method of black fly control accidentally when my rocket plants grew and bolted instantly in the heat. They have little white flowers which have attracted the Blackfly and so I kept them in the vegetable garden instead of removing them.

Another bolted vegetable was my Pak Choi plants that produced yellow flowers that were a magnet for black bugs and black fly.

Flowering plants have lots of beneficial reasons to be in the vegetable garden like attracting pollinators, homes to insects, filling gaps in the vegetable plot that would otherwise attract weeds.

3. Marigolds

Marigolds have a pungent smell to aphids and they won’t sit anywhere where they can smell the marigold.

I trialled a few years ago the Marigolds Ring of Steel and my update on whether it worked. Marigolds were planted all around my tomato plants which was quite successful in keeping away White fly from my tomato plants.

I have 2 Marigold plants in the greenhouse for the sole purpose of keeping off Blackfly, whitefly and greenfly off my tomato and pepper plants. They have been very successful.

4. Ladybirds

Ladybirds are a natural pest controlling insect that can eat up to 1000 aphids in one year. More about how ladybirds are beneficial to your garden here

5. Herbs

Blackfly and Greenfly

Herbs to plant to get rid of blackfly and greenfly are:

• Thyme,
• Rosemary and
• Peppermint

Whitefly

Herbs to plant to get rid of whitefly are:

• Basil,
• Dill and
• Chives.

Other Posts on Pests

Pesky Pests – Black, green and white fly

Ladybirds – Beneficial Insect Series

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