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them cool - they're really outdoor plants and don't like it too warm. Too much heat will make them leggy and floppy and they'll be martyrs to aphids. An unheated room would be ideal. You can bring them into your living room when they start flowering

stuff and 2) it only takes 1 year before it is usable instead of the usual 2 for horse manure.  Oh yes, thirdly, it's free.... Hello Robot, Some viruses can do this. They can easily be spread by aphids, feeding on the plants, so you really don't have

Over the last year or so my conifer hedge (around 60 ft by 10 foot high) has started to die and turn brown (could be the bad winters or maybe the conifer aphid). I’ve started to cut down the dead ones but some bits are still growing and you have a

?   Not a lot here either though they have competition for aphids form sparrows and tits feeding their young.  Not many butterflies either.  Quite a lot of bees buzzing about though. yes we have plenty ladybirds here,I am  in south yorkshire . Just saw

more bird friendly plants and leaving water out for them to drink and bathe in. Last summer I had less birds in the garden than when I was feeding but quite a number did come for the water and to feed off aphids and seed heads and hopefully will keep

to give a boost and enable it to fly off again. I like to do my bit to help bees if I can. Every year about this time the tips of the branches on our cherry tree are infested with aphids causing the leaves at the ends to curl up. I don't use sprays if I

much better this year, thanks to the ants. I then read up on ants, and found out that they eat lots of caterpillars and other pests to feed their lavae. I also read that red ants don't encourage aphids, like black ants do and that they also kill any

branches are dead. What should I do Reckon that 'fluff' is woolly aphid, and yes it often appears close to pruning cuts. The aphids produce the white waxy fibres as a protective measure and when they feed on young branches you may see some swelling too

but it was extremely hard work due to massive soul destroying aphid infestations. The plants recovered when they'd gone back in the greenhouse in May and cropped very early compared to my new plants.Another year I took them to work - warm and a sunny window sill

, and this is potentially catastrophic for bees.   There is really no need for gardeners to be using these pesticides, I don't think any plants are worth losing our bees over, there lots of natural controls; in the case of aphids just wait for the ladybirds and hoverflies