What and how to deal with aphids on cucumbers in greenhouses and open field
With the beginning of the garden season, all summer residents get added up not only with growing crops, but also with fighting against various pests. In the greenhouse and in the garden, cucumber planting is often damaged by aphids. How to deal with aphids on cucumbers with the help of folk methods and chemical means, it will be interesting to learn to all gardeners.
Types of parasites on plants
In the territory of European countries, scientists have found about 1 thousand. aphid species - pests of plants that feed on their juices, as well as spread various diseases. This is a small bug of 1-2 mm in size, having a variety of colors: straw yellow, green, brown or black. With the help of a proboscis, she pierces the leaf and sucks from it useful juices. They live in large colonies, so within a few days they can destroy almost the entire leaf part of the plant.
What does aphid look like on cucumbers? This is a cluster of small insects of different colors, often green, that sit on the bottom of the cucumbers.
Important!
The main enemy of aphids is ladybugswhich are able to eat more than 50 individuals per day, so they can be launched to fight the pest in the greenhouse. Some insects also like to eat it: golden-eyed, gall midges, wasps.
Aphids on cucumbers in a greenhouse can in a short time cause irreparable damage to the plants themselves, their ovaries and flowers, as a result of which fruiting stops. It is especially dangerous when settling on cucumber seedlings. Highlighting sweet pad, parasites attract some insects.They are especially loved by ants who arrange a symbiosis with pests: dragging them onto other plants, gradually infecting everything around. In winter, ants provide shelter for the breadwinners in their colony.
The most common type of this pest is a melon aphid, which has 2 phases of development: normal and winged. Wingless individuals breed directly on plants, and winged individuals fly over a short distance, finding new places for settlement and feeding. They live not only on cucumbers and tomatoes, but also on carrots, zucchini and pumpkin, berry bushes, so planting such crops is better placed away from each other.
Ways to fight
Aphids on cucumbers, both in the greenhouse and in the open field, can provoke the death of plants within a few days: the cucumber leaves turn yellow and coagulate, the ovaries cease to appear, the lashes become sick. Therefore, as soon as the aphid appeared, it is necessary to carry out regular processing by any means: during the flowering period and during fruiting.
On a note!
In order to remove small parasites from plants, it is necessary to comprehensively apply the means of control to ants who like to breed them.If near the planting of vegetables there are anthills or ants are seen, then they should also be destroyed.
Herbal remedies
Popular folk methods to help destroy aphids:
- Regular washing of the leaves on the reverse side with a wet sponge with soap and water: this procedure should be done carefully so as not to damage the delicate whips and shoots. The optimal bathing time is before dawn, when there is time for drying.
- Spraying cucumber planting infusion of dandelion, for this, 500 g of roots and 500 g of shoots pour 3 liters of water and insist for 24 hours, then drain and pour cucumbers using a spray bottle, paying attention to the reverse side of the leaves. Processing done in a day.
- Apply celandine can be in the form of infusion, which is taken 150 g of fresh or 300 g of dried leaves, which is poured 10 liters of hot water, leave for a day. After filtering the resulting tool watered the beds. It should be remembered about the toxicity of the celandine and not to allow small children and pets to come to it.
- Sprinkle cucumbers with infusion of 1 kg of tomato or potato tops, chopped and infused in 10 liters of hot water for several hours. To avoid leaf burns, a more concentrated solution is not recommended.
- When aphids appear on the leaves of cucumbers, treatment with tincture of onion peel or a solution with red paprika helps well.
- Use garlic from aphids It is recommended in the form of aqueous tincture (30 g of minced garlic in a bucket), insisting 2 days, then strain. The infusion of garlic is applied by treating plants with a spray bottle.
- To spray cucumbers with watery horseradish tincture, you need to grind 7-8 roots, add 3 liters of water, insist 3 hours, then the resulting product must be drained, and add liquid again in the remaining cake, after 3 hours of infusion, drain again, mix both solutions. Before baiting aphid, for 1 tbsp. Finished means of horseradish is added 5 liters of pure water.
It is necessary to fight with folk remedies with aphids in the greenhouse and in the garden: in one procedure, all individuals will not disappear, so spraying must be done in several stages.
Folk methods
To combat aphids was more effective for better adhesion of the solution to the leaves it is necessary to add grated household or tar soap.
Some folk recipeshelping to remove aphids:
- 400 g shag and 80 g of soap is poured with a bucket of warm water for a day, drain and process;
- ash for aphids: 200 g of ash and 50 g of soap per 10 liters of water, mix well and spray leaves and cucumber shoots;
- 10 g mustard powder On 1 liter of water, insist 2 days, add 60 g of soap shavings and 800 ml of distilled water to the resulting solution, cucumbers should be sprayed from a spray bottle;
- cucumbers can be saved from the onslaught of small pests by using a solution of manganese in combination with household soap, similarly, aphid prevention is carried out by using potassium permanganate solution for watering cucumber beds.
To get rid of aphids on cucumbers, experienced gardeners and gardeners use the original folk methods of dealing with the use of various substances and liquids that can be found in the household: soda, vinegar, manganese, vodka or moonshine, ammonia from aphids - all this quite successfully helps to cope with pests.
The fight against aphids folk remedies that are easily prepared at home:
- Ammonia from aphid it is applied like this: a solution is made with 50 ml of alcohol in a mixture with 10 l of water, 25 g of soap is added to sticking to the leaves. Used for processing the inside of the leaves and sprinkling the entire bush.This tool is recommended no more than 2 times a week, the procedure is carried out in dry sunny weather.
On a note!
Using ammonia from aphids, you can solve several problems at once, because it contains nitrogen, which is widely used as a fertilizer for plants. Ammonia or ammonia has a very strong smell, which frightens off pests, and spraying it with a solution fertilizes the plant with nitrogen and stimulates the growth of leaves and buds.
- One of the substances commonly used by gardeners is aphid vodka applied in its pure form with the addition of liquid soap, water is not necessary to top up.
- Baking soda it is used quite often due to its presence in the stocks of any hostess. To prepare a mixture of 75 g of soda mixed with a bucket of water, you can spray vegetables, bushes and fruit trees. At the same time, this solution helps in the fight against rot and powdery mildew on cucumbers.
- Use aphid vinegar advised many gardeners, for spraying 1 tbsp. vinegar is added to 1 liter of water. Acetic essence will require 1 tbsp. on a bucket of water.
- milk with iodine from aphid quite effectively used for the processing of vegetable crops, flowers and shrubs.To prepare the product, 100 g of milk, a bottle of iodine, 1 l of water and a syringe are taken: 0.5 cubes of iodine are first added to the milk, mixed and added to water.
- Hydrogen peroxide against aphids is a fairly popular means of protecting plants and destroying pests.
Chemicals
If aphids attacked plants in large quantities, then the question arises, what to treat cucumbers from aphids, when folk remedies do not help. There are many biological and chemical drugs that with high efficiency will help fight parasites.
Biological preparations for aphids do not pose a threat to human health, they infect a colony of insects, but do not poison the fruits and ovaries:
- Entobacterin is an effective remedy for aphids on cucumbers; it is produced in ampoules of 0.1 g each; after processing, a colony of pests gets sick and dies after 6-7 days;
- Tanrek remedy - harmless remedy for fruits and vegetables, can be used during the fruiting period, it has a destructive effect on insects;
- Arrow - a drug for the destruction of melon aphid, its action at temperatures above 20º C begins the next day after spraying the plants, has positive reviews of gardeners.
Insecticide-based chemicals contain substances harmful to humans, therefore, after using them, it is not recommended to consume fruits for 1 month. These drugs include: Intavir,insecticide Fitoverm, Arrivo, drug Aktara, means Spark. Before their use, all ripe fruits are removed.
The main rule in the fight against aphids on cucumber plantations - the alternation of various means, as insects quickly get used to the previously used substances.