Small Green Bugs Under Soil

Hello All,

I have small green bugs a half inch below the surface of the soil. They look like small tic tacs and there were hundreds of them.

I called all my buddies and checked out google and I'm not getting very far.

They were very small and they seemed to inch a long.

Can seeds have pests on board? Meaning in the seed.

This issue I'm having is from two new seeds that I just cracked. Only one of them had the bugs.

Anyone have any ideas what I was seeing?

Thanks

Tom

Root aphids. They can be red or green. Had to soak soil with SNS203. Now use Mosquito dunks in water. They took one third of my two grows. They are bad news! Damage the roots they do.

AZGreenAcresMM said:

Root aphids. They can be red or green. Had to soak soil with SNS203. Now use Mosquito dunks in water. They took one third of my two grows. They are bad news! Damage the roots they do.

Click to expand...

Holy crap!

Will Azatrol or Azamax take care of it?

Could that have been in the seed itself?

Thanks

Tom

root aphids look a bit like ticks.. i mean they have a round body like a tick. They are slow moving and you will usually see them crawling around the pots or near the drain holes of your pots. Eventually they will grow a bigt enough population that some will be born with wings and they will start to spread around the garden faster. Azamax and the like may work to control a population but I didn't have luck with it when i had them a few years ago. The only thing I found that worked 100% was a product by Bayer. Can't remember the name. There are 2 versions of it. One is for trees and shrubs and has some fertizlier in it and the other is for fruits and veggies per the product name.. It's a Blue bottle, the liquid is white before you dilute with water from what I remember. It is a systemic product and will take about 10-14 days to totally wipe them out. I have a friend that says he had success with nemotides but he is the only one that I know that claimed success with them. I've heard that if you use Aptus's Soil Attack every 2-3 weeks from initial transplant that root aphids will never take hold. I haven't had the displeasure of dealing with them since I started growing from seed and stopped taking genetics into my garden via clones from clubs and the like. That is where I got them everytime I got them. Haven't seen them in a good 1.5-2 years and counting!! Good luck with your bug issues...

The local shop guy told me that it is very unlikely that I have root aphids. Says that they are not that common here in Michigan. Also told me that they reproduce at a rapid pace and that if I saw as many as I saw that my plants would likely start falling over within a week. So far three days have passed and all the plants look really healthy. I did azatrol everything.

Since three days have passed I'm going to assume I'm good. With that said I've been scratching at my soil continuously. LOL

Thanks for your help

Tom