APHIDS

Aphids may be better known as greenfly or blackfly but the alias doesn't disguise the fact that this pest family is one of the biggest on the allotment, in the vegetable patch or anywhere in the garden for that matter.

To give you an idea what the gardener is up against, there are over 500 aphid species in the UK and northern Europe of varying colours and shades; although some are restricted to individual plant types and families, others will feed on literally hundreds of unrelated host plants and most staggeringly of all, they reproduce so quickly that a single aphid could potentially introduce ten million tonnes of offspring in one summer!

Nature ensures that this apocalyptical feat is never achieved and we can do our bit to help with sticky traps, fatty acid sprays and an army of natural predators including lacewing larvae and an old friend of the gardener, the ladybird. You'll find them all in our anti-aphid range, designed to make life as difficult as possible for these sap-sucking, virus-spreading, omnipresent garden pests!