A decent general purpose insecticide is actually soap. Which should be easy to find. Real soap, not detergents (sodium laural sulphate and its friends). You can (at least in NA) buy it as 'insecticidal soap' or make your own. You need to 'hit' the bugs with it to be effective.

Near as I know all spiders (except for the one they discovered in 2008) are predators, so it's there to eat something.

I'm not familiar with the Moroccan fauna to tell what the tiny pink bugs mean, pics?

Thanks!

Hm, haven't seen insectidal soap anywhere... or do you mean just regular solid bars of traditional soap? Those are made and sold here.

It's night time now, will take pictures of pink bugs tomorrow.

I use yellow sticky cards for pests including aphids.

I agree with gardengal.

And do not use hand soap. What is sold as insecticidal "soap" is actually a type of detergent.

+1 to a stream of water. It does work.

As for insecticidal soaps, the active ingredient is potassium salts of fatty acids: http://npic.orst.edu/factsheets/psfagen.pdf. It's basically a fat (with 'long chains' of carbon atoms) mixed with potassium hydroxide (a base).

"Regular" bar soap is made from sodium hydroxide, "liquid" soap is made from potassium. What's the difference (assuming they are real soap and not detergent)? Potassium based soaps remain 'liquidy' while sodium ones harden to a solid (soap making was once a hobby of mine). So if you're willing to put in the work (and have access to actual soap, not 'beauty bars' like they sell at the drug store in NA) to disolve bar soap it *might* work just as well. One manufacturer, safers brand, has some information mixed with FUD on their website page regarding home made soaps: https://www.saferbrand.com/articles/what-is-insecticidal-soap

Funky, than you for correcting me. Insecticidal soaps are NOT detergents, they are soaps.

Favas are a favourite with black aphids. You say "plant" singular. Does this mean you have just one? If so, and sloshing with water doesn't fix them, I'd probably just throw it out if it's badly affected. You can't expect more than a couple of handfuls of beans from one plant.

I don't know about the basil and fava bean plants, but every time I get an infestation of aphids on my citrus it's ants farming them for their honeydew. I hand-pick the fuzzy aphids and water-spray-off the others. Then I use diatomaceous earth on the ground around the plant and on the lower trunk. This keeps the ants from getting to the tree and 'planting' the baby aphids. In addition to spraying with water you might try buying some ladybugs and letting them go near your plants - IF they are available in Morocco.

I missed the Morocco mention. In that case I'd give up the on fava. They're a cold season plant even in the British Isles. In Morocco I'd imagine there a winter crop. 12 hours of summer sun would roast them.

Hey guys,

Thanks so much for the advice. I tried the simplest method (hosing them off) and it worked for the most part. Aphids are gone from the beans and the citrus.

(Thanks for the tip on the beans btw... that would explain why I have just one pod growing between two plants. They are indeed a spring crop and were showing up a lot in April/May. I might grow them out a bit more just for the fertilizer effect... or is that not worth it? Or would putting them in shade work? Either way this has been a good experiment and lesson for me, especially in terms of pests)

I have found two new problems though:

1) I have leaf rollers of some sort in my beans. A bunch of black dots (not bugs) all over the plant (I'm guessing fecal matter?). How do I deal with these?

2) I completely missed the fact that my citrus is also infected with the citrus leafminer (both pink aphids and leaf miners in the photo below). How do I get rid of these? Doesn't seem like I can spray them off :( There was a spider weaving a web above the citrus plant, was he hunting these guys? I kinda doubt it.

Thank you for your help!

For leaf miners the "general recommendation" is to use Neem oil. I'm not familiar with the fauna of Morocco to know if your leaf miners are susceptible as the ones in NA.

You might have luck with other types of oil since neem works basically by suffocating the miners. There's a (real) risk of burning the leaves since the oil can act as miniature magnifying glasses.

I have not had problems with leaf miners, so I don't know how effective other types of oil are.

There are parasitic wasps you can buy through the mail, at least in north america. I have no idea what their availability is where you live, and when I googled it I suspect I need to be using a different language than English, and I don't speak any of the official languages google told me are spoken (other than un peut de francais)

I'd be inclined to simply remove the miner affected leaves. Unless the photo is misleading there aren't too many.

I hadn't considered that, but that would work too.

Thanks guys. So far it's about 5-7 leaves but they're pretty much gone anyway, so I might as well remove them.

Where do these guys come from though? My plants are in pots on the roof. Do these guys fly?

Also, if I remove the affected leaves, what do I do if I notice a newly-affected leaf? Is there a way to stop them before they cause too much damage?

I'll try to find neem oil if I can.

This is how I get 90% control of all garden pests in my zone 6 garden

see https://theherbladyblog.wordpress.com/2017/06/21/sparrows-in-the-rose-garden/

Yeah, the problem with bringing in birds is that 1) sparrows aren't super common here (but they do exist) and 2) other birds eat my plants. It became such a problem that I started putting mesh wiring around all my plants.

Thanks guys. Spraying water helped with the aphids, plucking leaves helped with the leaf miners. I'll be watching closely from now on to nip the problem in the bud if it comes up again.

Just need to figure out what to do with the leaf rollers, although I'm probably going to cut down the broad beans since they're not in season and I have one pod to show for it from two plants.

Ivory soap is probably sold worldwide. Some people use Ivory liquid - Ivory soap that comes in the liquid form in a plastic bottle (I know plastic is bad for the environment). Just a few drops in a litre spray bottle might do it. Be sure to test first & slowly spray more plants with it if your test is successful. Test, test, test.

You can't get ivory soap in the U.K, unless you order it at a huge mark up from a specialist US importer, so I don't know about Morocco.

To add to what floral_uk said, I believe the liquid Ivory dish soap is also NOT like their cake soap - i.e., it is considered a "detergent" and has a number of ingredients in it that makes it one. Article on ingredients here.

If it is possible to find Castile soap (solid or liquid) that would be better.