Treating Black Cherry Aphids

It's always important to take time to wander amongst your trees because you can spot health issues rapidly and act accordingly.

Early November is usually when the cherry blackfly is on the attack. It's hard to spot because these critters are so slight, but the leaves on your trees quickly begin to curl.

Depending on how severe your infestation is, you can leave it to nature friends to deal with. Lady bugs follow quickly and love to eat black cherry aphids. In 2019, we avoided spraying the orchid because our dainty lady bugs got on top of them quickly.

Unfortunately in 2020, a nature's solution could not get on top of our aphids, and we needed to spray our orchard.

If you do manage to get on top of it early you can save significant money and spray by using a knapsack sprayer and targeting each individual tree effected. In our case they spread too quickly and this was not feasible, so we applied a foliage spray using a "tow behind" sprayer.

It was an excellent opportunity to get some other nutrients on too, including zinc and a crop booster.

If you get on top of aphids fast there is no long term damage to the trees, just a setback in growth.

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