I'm losing my Nasturtium to a mysterious pest!

Does anyone know what kind of pests like Nasturtium? The leaves are spotted brown with holes eaten through. The entire plant is infested and it looks like the bug is spreading to some other plants. There are eggs on the back of some of the leaves but I can't tell what the adult is. I did see a small fly on the back of a leaf but I don't know if it was just temporarily resting there or if it was the culprit. Please help! Thanks!

I would advise you to spray them. I use neem oil, but, the big box stores sell chemicals that are effective. I never bother to find out what is eating my plants, I just kill them.

What do the eggs look like, I found some eggs and I hatch them But they where on my Buddia. Something I have never seen here before

Sounds like the eggs of a caterpiller or moth, could you wash them off with a strong jet from the hose, or pich off the leaves from the other plants, cause if these eggs hatch, you will be infested all over again, there are dozens of flies that could also lay eggs anything from black fly, green fly and white fly, many more, any chance of a picture of the affected leaf with the eggs on show, be better than guessing on the thread. WeeNel.

WeeNel has good advice. Often an infestation can be controlled with blasting them off with water, scaping the eggs off the undersides of the leaves or picking off the affected foliage. Using non-selective chemicals to control a pest as a first resort is like using nuclear weapons to kill a housefly.

Blasting the eggs off does not control pests effectively, you can't get all the eggs, they just lay more, and you still have the adult pests. Neem oil is a very natural and effective insecticide. Problem solved in 10 minutes. Then you can move on to more important tasks.

The eggs I have hatch are living in a jar because I don't know if they are a good bug or a bad one This is a pic of them taken today
The same eggs and I have two diff. colors and one the has a hole diff. look I have also notice that they are eating the weak.

This is a pic of the diff. one. Its more fuzzy than the others. I have search to find what there are. and no luck in finding what they are.

Dale,

When you say 'Neem oil is a very natural and effective insecticide'. I must admit that I'm trying to learn all this myself but I'm not sure that this is entirely true. My understanding is that Neem oil is a fairly toxic substance derived from a plant in India. I'm sure, since it is toxic, that is 100% effective the first time you use it.

But, I'm not sure I agree that it's "natural" and "effective". By the way, in the below text, both Dale and I are totally 'organic'.

Natural - well let's just start with it's not natural because you're blasting a flower in America with an extract from a tree from India. That (I think to myself) is a weak argument because the nasturtium is I believe from South America originally so shouldn't be here in the first place....But anyway, it's certainly not 'natural' if you didn't intervene 'nature' wouldn't have done that. Unless... You're not part of nature are you Dale? I've suspected you for some time you are but have been hesitant to bring it up...

Effective - Ok, well here, I believe is the real rub. Yes, I believe, Dale's Neem oil would kill every living thing on the Nasturtium flowers the first season. 10 minutes = success! (that right there is what tipped me off that this was the wrong answer. Everything in gardening is hard) Ok, so we're in the second season and we plant some nasturtiums.

We're not dumb enough to put them in the same place are we? No, we move them a bit. But, Dale's Neem oil only killed 99% of the Insect/Disease. 1% wakes up feeling frisky and making eggs/spores/zygotes. They hit the new nasturtiums like a pile of bricks via wind/insects.

We hit them with Neem again but guess what they are resistant because they are the spawn of the only ones that lived through the last attack of Indian Neem.

With this post, I'm not trying to attack Dale_a_gardner. Far from it. I'm a new gardener and have learned a lot from his posts and I hope he and others see some of the sarcasm buried herein. As a new gardener, I think the difference between 'organic' and 'chemical' gardening is something many people would find interesting if it were exciting enough for popular media.

I, as I suspect Dale and many other gardener's don't care we just want to grow quality plants for consumption.

I looked closer and the eggs were grayish black. The little black flies were with them so I think that is the culprit. I picked them off. Do ladybugs take care of those flies? They might be aphids but I've seen aphids in my garden also that don't look like these winged bugs. I'll try to get a picture.

Here is a picture of the bugs!

These look like the black flies that are on my beens right now, I just pick off the leaves and distroy the eggs,

The other hatchlings are definately caterpillers from the buterflies and will gnaw there way through your garden if you dont get rid, shame to kill butterfly babies as the adults help polination but the caterpillers are the worst stage, so spray something safe that wont kill the good guys/bugs. Good luck. Weenel.

The best thing to kill caterpillars is Bt. Bacillus thuringus is a NATURAL insecticide. It is a bacteria that only affect caterpillars. It won't affect humans or harm any other critters. It won't even affect the ground water. It occurs in nature (and in garden centres)

You probably have cabbage butterflies. I don't get rid of "pests" in my yard. They won't kill the plant and don't cause any harm to the flowers. I enjoy watching the life cycle take place in my backyard. You can gather the little green caterpillars in a jar with some leaves, watch the metamorphosis and release the butterflies!

jthorley23,

"Here is a picture of the bugs!"

I can't tell from the photo because it is a little fuzzy, but you might have nasturtium aphids. http://annsplants.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/liveaphids-300x300.jpg

You can see an account of them at the following link. Scroll down that page to find the article titled, "Black Aphids on Nasturtiums - Murdered!"

http://annsplants.com/

Ironically, some people plant nasturtiums to repel aphids.

http://www.newsday.com/features/home/ny-lihowto071708-pg,0,6768635.photogallery?index=2

Oh well.

ZM

I know what they are Black Aphids which are inevitable on these plants. They love Nasturtiums. I used to grow Nasturtiums years ago and would get them. They suck the life out of a plant---sucking insects, not chewing. They tend to cluster under and along the leaf stem and are dark brown or black, small. You can spray them off with a hose but won't get the eggs.

I used Malathion to kill them. This insecticide will kill bugs of all kind and is the only thing I use. Also kills spider mites. Use a squirt of dishwashing soap in the spray as a "sticker" to allow the spray to stick on the leaves. Otherwise it will just roll of. Since these bugs are sucking insects you have to hit them directly with the spray to kill them, inluding eggs. Only chewing insects will die from eating sprayed plants.

You probably have ants also. Ants go after the sweet secretion aphids leave behind. Actually ant have a relationship with aphids and actually place them on plants and herd them just for the secretion.

If you have something chewing on them, the Malathion will take care of them also. I was going by the photo posted above to id the bug.

This message was edited Apr 2, 2009 12:51 AM

I know this was posted quite a long time ago but I'm wondering if there is any further information out there regarding the "natural" and "safe" removal of black fly/black aphids from my nasturtiums (and various other victims).

I'm not really planning to eat my flowers but I would like to make sure that any removal of the little fellows from my plants would be safe for my puppy to be around. She doesn't seem to be that interested in flowers anymore but I just want to be sure.

I live in Germany in the North East region and wonder if there are any tried and tested methods of saving my plants from these horrible things. My beautiful poppies and clematis plants are also on the menu for these little fellows.

I have tried spraying with a mixture of washing-up liquid and warm water, as suggested, but this really does not seem very effective.

Would be great to get a handle on this problem. Thank you.

I know there are several different types of blackflies, I ALWAYS get a visit soon as my beand get to about 2-3 feet high and they seem to settle on the growing tip, tender, lush and obviously very tastey to these bugs.
I tried washing up liquid soap diluted with water and is dids help a bit but not every black fly was washed off with that method but would still recomend it and you need to spray every day/ evening.

What I found best was to nip out the growing tips of the beans and drop them into hot water where the flies died instantly, this treatment did not harm the beans as they were helped to send out side shoots and a more bushy plant came from that, by the time the side shoots had reached any size, the flies infestation has passed.
Maybe try that on a few plants to see how it goes.
Best of luck. WeeNel.