I've used diluted dish soap before but the most effective thing is to just kill them by hand. If you kill all the ones you can see once a day for 3 days, I bet you will see far less after that.

Ladybugs eat aphids. You could also plant a trap crop such as roses. All the aphids will be eating the rose instead of your zucchini.

I don't mind smushing them by hand, but they are in cracks and crevices, and it would be impossible to mash many without damaging the plants too.

The zucchini are next to the "trap crop," and no one told the aphids that the roses are for them and the zucc for me.

As for ladybugs, they tend to fly off wherever they want, and even though they do eat aphids, there aren't enough to manage my problem.

Thanks for your reply. I may try the dish soap.

In the long run, creating a healthy ecosystem around your garden helps - organic mulch, diversity of plants that are not planted closely together, separate plants that are of the same family, etc.

Nasturtiums are also used as a trap plant for aphids.

Just following up here in case anyone cares--I've used the diluted dish soap a couple days, and things are looking better. I saw no aphids today. Also found aphid traps on Amazon but even cheaper on ebay, so I got a few of those as the reviews were good.

I kill them by hand on my maters. :) It's an evening ritual for me. :)

socks12345, glad the dish soap is working for you. Zucchinis are robust growers so I am sure they will do just fine even with occasional aphid damage.

Last year I planted a couple of nasturtium plants (not knowing ANYTHING about nasturtiums) & we didn't see one aphid. This year, I pulled all the nasturtium plants because they seeded like crazy & took over my garden and last week DH came to me saying one of our tomato plants was covered in aphids. I'm kicking myself for removing the nasturtiums & am tempted to re-plant one or two near my tomatoes, since the plants grow so quickly. In the meantime, however, I am worried about the plant. All other home remedies I've tried have failed (neem oil, garlic water, soap water, etc.). Hopefully the plant will hold out till the nasturtium grows and until then, squishing it is! Good luck!

For the ones you can't get to because of the tiny crevices, use something like a plastic fork... I found about 10 of them and a grown one on my young cilantro plant a few weeks ago, their steps were too young for me to try to squish them by hand so I used a fork to knock them off and squish them dead. Luckily, I haven't had much of an issue of them on my zucchini, I found a dried dead shell of a grown aphid on my zucchini last week... A particular wasp (not sure if the same one) likes to visit my garden every 15 minutes or so, and it sends me running away bc I don't want it to sting me, lol. I think that wasp maybe one of those predatory wasps that kill aphids, there maybe a way to attract them if they exist in your area.