Something is eating our violets.

I don't use many yard chemicals. I buy Ladybugs and Preying Mantis every spring and they seem to keep pests away, but I also tend to have hardy plants since I don't have a lot of yard work time. I've never had violets so not sure where they rate on the needy vs hardy spectrum.
 
Think the violets are pretty robust, they have spread into my lawn and are doing quite well, to my chagrin. At least they are green. I mow them once a week and they keep coming back. In the spring, the lawn is filled with flowers, so it's not all bad.
 
Janderso said:
I love fresh raspberries!!
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Me too! One of life's pleasures is to go out to your kitchen garden and pick a few raspberries for breakfast. Love it. I do have to chase the sparrows away, though. Dang things are a plague.
 
My worst pests are bower birds, they eat the bananas, paw-paws and strip the ripe chillies from the plants the moment they appear.
In the aquaponic beds I often get caterpillars from various sources so as I cannot use conventional insect sprays as 99% of those are harmfull to the fish and all the so called organic mixes I've tried are worse than useless. I use DiPel and found it to be excellent.
Dont know if its available in the US but it contains Bacillus Thuringiensis var. Kurstaki and is totally harmless to us, pets, fish, bees etc but unfortunately not aphids.
 
BT is common here in CA.

take a sample to your county ag department, if they are not close then maybe a guide nursery or farm chemical supply like Wilbur Ellis or nutrien

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you could try to make a dishwashing soap/water mixture to combat the aphids.
a few drops of dishwashing soap, a sprayer , and water is all that is necessary
liberally spray the plants for protection
 
This spring we had a really bad azalea sawfly problem, their larvae were decimating our azaleas. I used a product that contains pyrethrin plus castor oil. Mixed it up, sprayed the buggers & gone after just one application. The advantage of pyrethrin is that it degrades very quickly in sunlight so there's less chance that desirable pollenators will be killed. The azaleas also seem to be less affected by lacebug so that's a plus. But stay away from products that use "permethrin". The latter is a synthetic that persists much longer so there's a greater danger of killing desirable insects.

My online research showed that sawfly larvae are not affected by BT so that wasn't an option. They look just like caterpillars but apparently are different enough to render BT useless.

I also use a pyrethrin-based spray to control flea beetles on our tomatoes so it's a fairly broad spectrum insecticide; and it's OMRI approved. Even so, we only use the stuff at the start of the season. Flea beetles seem to be especially ravenous at that time.

Systemic insecticides can get into the flower nectar and then affect bees, so we stay away from them when we can.
 
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