Aphids on Tomatoes and How to Get Rid of Them
There are some common pests on tomatoes and aphids are some of the most voracious, they are able to clone themselves every 20 minutes and even the clones that have been produced come with a built in baby ready to go. So aphids not only clone their children, they do in effect clone their grandchildren. Early in the year they tend to produce all females but as the end of the year approaches they start to produce some males.
The reason for this is that the males can go off and mate with females to start to change the genetic profile a little. This ensures that the species can continue should some unexpected change in environment occur. You can imagine that should the aphids try and survive on cloning alone, with no genetic variation at all, then should some circumstance come along that kills one, then it is obviously going to kill them all. Hence the reason that males of the species have to be retained and why aphids have sex, other than that it wouldn’t be necessary.
When it comes to aphids on tomatoes I can imagine as a keen gardener you are probably thinking ‘shame they thought about that I wouldn’t have to worry about them otherwise’. Unfortunately life is never quite that simple, but never fear, there are a few ways of dealing with aphids and not all of them involve using chemical pesticides.
