What is up everyone? Welcome back to the Epic Gardening Podcast.

Today we're talking about aphids and that is a huge topic because there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of species of aphids, all that, all attacking different plants, all

looking slightly different, but fortunately there are common methods to destroy aphidsids no matter what species they are no matter what plant they're attacking

you can approach it all in the same way so the first thing we have to ask is what are aphids?

As I said, there's over 4,400 species and 250 of those species are destructive to plants in our garden.

There are tiny black bugs, tiny green bugs, tiny white bugs. Some are red,

some are pink, some are brown. There are a ton of them. It really shouldn't be too intimidating though

because as I said, all these aphids have similar life cycles

all of them can be defeated in the same way.

So what do aphids look like?

Most of them have a pear shape. They have long antenna and

long legs. You might not notice the antenna or the legs though because they are

very very small. Even the big ones are pretty small. You can see them with the naked eye but they're just

small and you usually won't notice those smaller identifying marks. You'll notice

the pear shape. You'll also notice that there are a ton of them.

Usually there are quite a few aphids in one area.

They will cluster and they are usually on the underside of a leaf.

You can't really shake them off. They are very, very well adhered to your plant matter.

So shaking them is not a good strategy. Now, they are widespread because they actually don't have to mate before they reproduce.

Female adult aphids give birth to live female nymphs.

They don't require mating with a male.

So that is one reason why aphids can be so prevalent.

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