North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Alan Haigh" <alandhaigh@gmail.com>]

If you need to control aphids it is often best to wait for lady bugs here but with Cherries they sometimes avoid predation by curling the leaves.  Of course, this makes them harder to spray as well.  If you try to control the aphids with a poison spray you''ll also take out your ladies who show up when aphid numbers are high.

 

I have had situations where ants seemed to ward off the lady bugs and the best way to deal with this is with ant stakes.  If you're absolutely organic there are some materials that work but not nearly as well.  I think organic methods should allow the use of synthetic baits that don't disperse the poison into the environment, but hey, what do I know?  I don't mind dispersing a little synthetic poison into the environment anyway.