Aphids On My Honeysuckles!

Aphids On My Honeysuckles! by Kristina Hughes, Clear Creek County Master Gardener I’m writing this blog partly as a reminder to myself to attend to a problem I first noticed last growing season but whose best treatment is applied during the winter. Now would be a good time to deal with it. I have several honeysuckle shrubs on my property. They are one of the few types of shrubs I can grow which don’t get savaged by the animals and don’t require extra water. I have been hugely pleased with them. Photo by Kristina Hughes This past summer, I noticed that the honeysuckle leaves looked odd: small, purplish and rolled length-wise, growing in tight little clusters as if the leaves had never fully expanded. From a distance the leaf clusters on the branches looked like they were covered in flecks of black and white dirt. When I looked more closely, I saw tiny white flecks and tiny green bugs, LOTS of them, all over both the outside and inside of the rolled up leaves. I knew they were aphids bec