Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

Would you love to know how to control aphids in your fruit trees? They are one of the most common pests that infect a variety of fruit trees.

Our experience over meany years has shown that plums in particular are often affected by them. But they can also affect peaches, nectarines, cherries, and even apples and pears.

Do you know how to tell whether you have aphids? We know from getting LOTS of questions from our Grow Great Fruit members that aphids are often confused with leaf curl disease.

First, you need to know how to identify an aphid infection, so let’s start there.

How do you know if you have aphids?

Have you seen any curly leaves like this on your tree? If you have—you’re not alone. It’s a classic sign that you might have aphids.

Leaves on a plum tree showing classic signs of aphid infestation, mainly curling inwards.
Leaves on a plum tree showing classic signs of aphid infestation

The sap-sucking aphids have taken up residence on the inside of its leaves, which you can see by the curly leaves.

Though it shares the symptom of the leaves going curly, it’s completely different from the Leaf curl disease that you sometimes see on peach and nectarine trees.

If you tease open one of the leaves you’ll usually find aphids of some sort on the inside.

Are aphids easy to spot?

If you get a really bad infestation, you won’t mistake it. You’ll be able to see hundreds (or thousands) of aphids crawling around, as you can see on this peach tree (below).

A close up of a cluster of peach leaves that are completely infested with clusters of small black aphids.

These are black aphids, one of the more common types that infest fruit trees. You’ll often find them on cherry, plum, peach, and nectarine trees.

Another common type on apple trees is called woolly aphid, for a very good reason:

A stem on an apple tree covered with the white fluffy material that indicates an infestation of woolly aphids.
Woolly aphid on an apple tree

There’s a third type of aphid that commonly affects fruit trees, and that’s green peach aphid, which — you guessed it — you’ll find on peach and nectarine trees.

Tiny green aphids are seen clustered at the base of leaveson a peach tree.

How do you stop an aphid infestation?

The first thing to know is that you don’t have to do it alone!

There are lots of insects that might be in your garden that love to help clean up aphids. Learning how beneficial insects can help your garden is one of the 5 key steps to healthy fruit.

Sometimes when you look inside a curly leaf to see if aphids are responsible, you might see something like this leaf we found on a plum tree:

The inside of a curled up green leaf shows dead bodies of aphids which have been parasitised by predator insects. There are only a couple of live aphids left.

There are only a couple of live aphids here, but those small black smudges are a really good sign. These are the dried and shriveled remains of aphids that have been killed by other insects.

Beneficial insects (that eat other insects) do a wonderful job of keeping pest insects under control in healthy, biodiverse gardens.

Controlling aphids on trees – without using insecticide

We found this leaf (below) on one of our cherry trees. Inside it is a little community of insects that is a great sign of a healthy ecosystem.

A spider and an aphid-eating wasp are co-habiting, and both eat their fill of aphids. (Actually, the spider might be eating the wasp – you can never be sure who’s eating who in the insect world!)

Insecticides (of any sort) are exactly the wrong response for aphids. Using any chemicals will risk destroying the very thing that will fix your problem.

Peeking into the side of a curled up cherry leaf reveals a spider, a wasp, and plenty of aphids. It's hard to tell who is eating who.

How to get rid of aphids naturally

We’re often asked how to get rid of aphids, and unfortunately, people often aren’t happy with our answer!

Biodiversity and patience really are the keys to getting the populations of these pesky pests back under control.

Whatever you do, DON’T SPRAY INSECTICIDE!

It can feel like an easy solution, but you’ll inevitably kill predator insects and just make the problem worse. Before we converted to organic production, the aphid populations in our orchard stayed high, year after year. It was mainly due to the use of insecticides that routinely kill the “good” insects that would naturally keep the aphids under control.

We learned the hard way that spraying is expensive, it’s ineffective, and it’s bad for the health of the tree, the user, the eater of the fruit, and the whole ecosystem.

In fact, one of the first big successes we had when we stopped using chemicals was seeing green peach aphid and woolly aphid disappear from our orchards almost overnight!

The best homemade aphid killer

We can show you how to make a number of home-made remedies that can help in the short term with aphid control.

However, our experience over many years has shown that just like bought insecticides, if you rely solely on a solution in a bottle you quickly become dependent on needing to use the same solution every year.

In fact, you might even be making the problem worse over time.

Bunches of curly leaves on a plum tree usually indicate an aphid infestation.
The typical curly leaves that indicate an aphid infestation on a plum tree

So, here are our top 7 tips for controlling aphids:

  1. Monitor your trees regularly for aphids.
  2. If you identify that you do have aphids, watch very carefully to see whether you also have any predator insects around that are eating them. Spiders, ladybirds, and wasps are all particularly voracious aphid-eaters.
  3. Check whether you have ants in the tree associated with the aphids. Ants like to ‘farm’ aphids by moving them from tree to tree and guarding them against predators.
  4. If you find ants in your trees, exclude them by any means necessary. Don’t bother trying to kill the ants as they bring excellent eco-services to your garden and are very hard to get rid of. Stop them from getting to the aphids by putting a sticky barrier between the aphids and the ant nest.
  5. Focus on building the biodiversity of plant life under your fruit trees. Flowering plants, particularly white and yellow flowers are really good at attracting predator insects and providing them with habitat.
  6. Unhealthy trees will attract more aphids, so concentrate on improving the health of your tree by improving the soil it’s growing in.
  7. Use short-term solutions (like organic sprays) only in extreme circumstances, and with extreme caution!

We recommend keeping a toolbox of short term solutions in your back pocket, but taking a more long-term view by creating such a healthy garden that aphid populations are kept under control naturally.

Related Articles

Wannabe an organic farmer?

Wannabe an organic farmer?

Do you have a secret dream to be an organic farmer? We asked people about their dreams and barriers – with some surprising results!

read more

Get our FREE ebook – 10 Key Steps to Growing Great Fruit

This useful ebook will give you answers to all the topics you need to know, from pests to pruning, and it’s completely free!

You'll soon be enjoying abundant harvests.

When you download the ebook, you'll also get our free Weekly Fruit Tips newsletter to help you stay on track with the little jobs that keep your trees healthy and fruitful.

Just hit "Get my ebook!" to download your free copy.

You have Successfully Subscribed!