Why, Aphids? Why?

Amongst the many questions that I will ask God when if I get to heaven,

one of them will most certainly be:

Why did you create aphids?

Aphids are pesky little green bugs that love SUPER love pepper and tomato plants.

You'll often find them on the bottom sides of the leaves,

and if you don't take care of them quickly, they'll be the demise of your garden.

I started many of my vegetable plants from seed this year, 

and overall it's been a success

with two exceptions:

tomatos and peppers.

The tomato seedlings died awhile ago and had nothing to do with aphids at all,

rather with me leaving them in the hands of my husband while I left for a long weekend.

The peppers, though, I can COMPLETELY blame on aphids.

Some of them made it through to planting, though, and luckily I caught the problem pretty early on.

The only good thing about having an aphid problem is that they are pretty easy to get rid of.

There are a lot of sprays that you can use, and most of them treat the problem (kill kill kill the aphids) rather quickly.

But I'm always weary of using any chemical sprays on plants that my family and I are hoping to eat at some point.

So, I've tried a couple of different organic sprays, and this is my favorite:

Note: if you buy a spray bottle with a little filter at the bottom,
you don't have to strain the garlic out of the solution.

Organic Aphid Spray:

Fill a spray bottle (under a dollar at most home improvement and discount stores) with water about 3/4 of the way to the top,

add a squirt of biodegradable dish soap,

and a couple cloves of garlic, minced.

Mix it all together, let it sit overnight for greater strength,

and spray it on your plants.

You can use it pretty liberally,

and you might have to go back a couple of times.

The dish soap will kill the aphids

and the garlic will deter them altogether.

Be sure when you spray your plants to get under the leaves since that's where aphids love to hang.

Hope this helps you all!

Things are looking great in the garden, and I'm hoping to have an update of the progress up soon.