It is hard to tell from the photo----all I see is little red blobs----but probably aphids. Look at the photo of red aphids I've linked below and see if that is what your little pests look like live and in person.

If they are aphids, control is not hard. If you have ladybugs, they will eat the aphids. In particular, the larval ladybugs (which look like little gray and orange alligators) gobble up a lot of aphids.

Or, you can use insecticidal soap or neem. If you use neem, be really careful and spray it on the plants only at twilight so that it won't harm the bees (who aren't active at and after twilight, having already returned to their hives).

If your pests are not aphids, I have other possibilities in mind.

Aphids

The pictures don't post with much clarity. I do have to admit they are cell phone pictures, but it's the best I have. Dawn, they are definitely red aphids. I had googled and never saw the red ones. Thank you both so much! I had considered neem, but I would have never know about treating at twilight.

You're welcome.

You could try knocking them off with a strong stream of water. Sometimes that works, and sometimes it doesn't. Or, if a lot of rain is headed your way, the rain might do it for you, especially if it is windy.

Insecticidal soap would work, but if you choose to mix up some instead of buying actual insecticidal soap, be sure to use soap, not detergent, because detergent can burn foliage, especially at too high of a concentration or on a hot, sunny day. (At a low concentration, insecticidal soap kills insects, but at a higher concentration, it kills plants.)

I usually ignore aphids and wait for the lady bugs to gobble them up, but that can be hard to do if there's a lot of aphids and you don't see any lady bugs around. Two weeks ago I had a lot of garden pests and few ladybugs. I decided to try to wait patiently and see what developed. Now I have a garden full of ladybugs, and few pests.

Robert mentioned spider mites, and I'd keep an eye open for them. I have had them on various plants since March, but the only damage they've done that has bothered me was to a few leaves on some pole beans. I sprayed the backs of six leaves with a bio-pesticide that contains some essential oils and maybe that will take care of the spider mites. The lady bugs have been working hard, keeping the potatoes, tomatoes, cabbage, corn, snap peas and flowers pest-free, but I haven't seen any ladybugs on the bean plants. It might be we just don't have enough lady bugs to go around yet. Spider mites are a major issue in hot, dry weather but not always quite so bad in rainy years so I'm not overly concerned about seeing them so early.

I had some aphids a couple of weeks ago, they went nuts over my goji plant the most. I had extremely good luck buying some ladybugs and releasing them, they totally ate them all up not leaving even one behind!

I live in Moore and we've gotten almost ten inches of rain in the past 24 hours and it seems to have knocked most of my problems away! I did see a lady bug on that particular plant yesterday and jumped for joy! Seems like it might just work itself out! The only bad news I have to report, other than drowning tomato babies, is that the top of my black cherry plant was completely severed last night!

I know planting in tires is horrible, I've read a previous post of dawn's. But I'm glad they were there or I would have lost everything last night!

Wow. I'm so glad they're elevated! Just incredible.

While I wouldn't choose to plant in tires, it is your garden and you can do as you please. I might not agree with your choice, but I'd still defend your right to make your own choices. Of course, you know me well enough from reading my response to that post of Bon's that you know I would have tried to talk you out of planting in tires if I'd known you were doing it. : )

That's a horrific amount of rainfall---you were gunning for my record 24-hour rainfall of almost 13", weren't you? It is a good thing your plants are elevated or they might be in trouble. To me, those tires right now sort or resemble life preservers, and that likely is the function they performed for your plants.

If it ever stops raining and it starts getting hot, you might want to heap some sort of mulch (Straw, hay or grass clippings would work great) over the exposed black portion of the tires a couple of inches thick to try to keep the black rubber from heating up and then overheating the roots within the soil contained within the tires May is a long month with lots of wicked weather in an average year, so there likely will be some more weather challenges for those plants.....and being in Moore, where tornadoes have an uncanny knack of hitting far too often, just ups the ante for your plants.

When I was a kid, people in our neighborhood who grew ornamental plants in tires painted the tires with white latex paint to reflect sunlight off the tires, but I noticed their plants often looked pretty toasty and tired by late July or early August despite the gardener's efforts to keep the roots from overheating.

The black cherry plant will grow back its top in the blink of an eye, and I would have been surprised if all that rain didn't wash away the pests.

Our big hazard here in flooding rainfall is the fire ants----they form balls of ants, comprised of nothing but ants, and they swarm all over each other, floating around in the flood water.....until a person who is cleaning up runs into a ball of ants or picks it up thinking it is just leafy or bark-type storm debris.I didn't see any pests on any of my plants this morning and we have had less than 3" of rain this week. It doesn't take a lot of rain to wash away pests---just some nice moderately hard rain. Your rainfall sort of exceeded the "moderately hard" classification----by a mile.

The garden was full of bees, butterflies, dragonflies and ladybugs this morning but I wasn't seeing anything much that would be considered pests. I am sure there's still pest type bugs for the lady bugs to eat, or they'd promptly fly away to greener pastures with a more plentiful food supply.

The only reason I chose tires this year is bc we are moving around the 1st of August. I couldn't stand not growing this year so I opted for something that wouldn't totally break my heart (and my bank) if I had to just leave it all behind. Once I read your post about tires it really dawned on me about cooking the roots bc tires absorb so much heat! I'm sure it will just make it that much easier to walk away from when it's time to move. ::sniffles:: Next year will be an entirely different ball game with my garden bc I'll be able to do more permanent things! Can't wait!