I feel kind of bad posting this, given that most everyone's been frozen out of any gardening right now. However, down here in Miami we made it through the cold snaps without a frost. So I'm still trying to deal with the usual assortment of pest/disease problems that come with an active garden. And right now, that means aphids.

I've got a minor aphid problem on my eggplants - not so serious that they are damaging the health of the plants themselves, but the little blighters are infesting the blooms pretty badly. I can knock them off the leaves (mostly I squish 'em), but I can't get them out of the blooms manually without damaging the flowers. So I've been spraying, or at least trying to.

Having reviewed the many threads on controlling aphids, I've been using a mix of 1/4 tbsp of Murphy's Oil in one gallon of water - and it hasn't even slowed them down. So I'm going to increase the concentration a bit, and see how it works out. I was going to head up to 1/2 tbsp. My question is how far can I go before I run the risk of damaging the plants?

Alan