The next natural progression in your escalating war with aphids is insecticidal soap. You can go to any nursery and purchase some concentrate, or do like I do, and just make your own.

If that doesn't work, then you can move on to the more drastic solution of pesticides. Please use caution and restraint with pesticides as they will wipe out beneficial insects just as easily as pests.

Also, its worth checking that the aphids aren't being farmed by ants. If thats the case, simply prevent the ants from gaining access to the plant, give them another blast of water, and the problem will eventually go away.

Glad to see this post. I was wondering about turning ladybugs loose on them. Has anyone ever released ladybugs on houseplants? Any luck with this?

Mike

I've used lady bugs before, without much success. They certainly aren't capable of eliminating a major infestation, but they might be able to help prevent one in the first place. The problem lies in it being such a slow process. The lady bugs themselves don't eat many aphids, if any. It's actually the subsequent nymphs from the eggs they lay that eat all the aphids. This obviously takes days to play out. If you have a major infestation, the aphids can reproduce almost as fast as the nymphs can eat them, so there is little change in the overall population.

Yep I sure have, but I had an inclosed structure.

Refrig. and release them at night, it works like a charm. When they finish release to nature, so they won't die.

That is a really good point. If you can enclose the lady bugs, then they will eat aphids from off *your* plants, not all the plants in your neighborhood. Normally, they just fly away as soon as they get warm enough, leaving only the wingless nymphs behind to do the actual aphid eating...

Thanks for the info.
Mike