Are The Aphids Gone or Regrouping?

Is it possible that we've actually won our skirmish against the aphids? Mind you, we've had to resort to chemical warfare. Sorry about that. We put down this ant poison trap near our mystery plant. I also sprayed the plant with a mild dilution of Bronner's Magic Soap.

POSTSCRIPT: My aunt says the plant is a Desert Rose (Adenium obesum) Everybody seems to have them in pots in Hawaii.


Today, there were two flowers blooming and no sign of ants or aphids. Granted it's only been about 4 days, but those bugs are usually back within a couple of days.


I checked all the leaves and couldn't find any of those sneaky, persistent, insect extremists.


We'd also put one of those ant poison things by our red ginger plants that were constantly attacked and over-run by ants that kept sucking the life out of the poor, innocent, young flowers.


Well, no sign of ants and the flowers are looking pretty healthy and happy now.

I know this was only one battle. We haven't won the war, but I'm willing to settle for a little peace.

Bugging the Heck Out of Me!

We planted the red blossom Ixora plant at the front of our house about a year or so ago because it was supposed to be a hardy plant for the tropics. It worked well for a while until the ants and aphids found it and attacked. We tried everything from soapy water to trying to clean off the leaves whenever we saw the bugs but it was a losing battle.

We decided to pull it out and try the plant on the left instead. I hope it does OK out of the pot.

I'm all for letting nature have her way to a point, but this is ridiculous! All the new Ixora leaves were covered with aphids brought by the ants to milk.


I didn't realize there were this many aphids until I took this close-up shot.


Even the flowers are covered with aphids. Many of the blooms just wither away.


The rest of the plant is covered with a black and white ash like substance.


I have no idea what this new plant is called because my aunt gave it to us. We're keeping our fingers crossed.

Does anybody have advice on how to get rid of aphids and ants?

Will This Stop Tropical Bugs from Killing My Plants?

I've been trying to figure out how to get rid of the black fungus on my Ixora. The flowers keep falling off because of all the ants, aphids and fungus that's sucking the life out of it. I planted this bush because I thought it was supposed to be indestructible.

A couple of days ago, the Honolulu Advertiser had an article about Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap. The advice was to mix the soap (1 part soap to 5 parts water) with water and spray your plants with it, both top and bottom of the leaves. UPDATE WARNING! (7-04-09) The 1 to 5 ratio was wrong. It killed my ginger flower and has nearly killed my Ixora.


You know....
It did kill the ants on our ginger plant. Sorry about the blurry photo.

We'll see how the suffering Ixora does in the coming days.

I've been reading up some more on the web about Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap and the Southern Nevada Water Authority says 2 Tbsp. Dr. Bronner's (Peppermint!) soap to 1 gallon of water. Wow! I've probably made my solution too strong. I hope it doesn't kill the plant. Well, if this is correct, it's certainly more economical.