The wisdom of ladybirds

Two years ago we tried to grow some climbing French Beans. I say tried, because just as they were starting to flower they became so coated in blackfly that they looked like something out of a horror movie. It was like the plant had a living, crawling rippling skin. This abundance of aphids attracted vast quantities of ladybirds (whose young eat aphids by the sackload), but despite this, the plants eventually just gave up. I think we got one solitary bean from them. But the following year I noticed that not only did we have less blackfly, but loads more ladybirds - even in early spring. Thanks to the abundance of aphids, they'd overwintered in our garden. Since then we've always had lots of ladybirds, and far fewer aphids.

However, this spring despite the lovely ladies in red in the photo above, we have a big patch of Euphorbia entirely coated in aphids. And they're not happy - the plants that is, I'm sure the aphids are very content. I'd love to say I maintain a zen-like calm in the face of these pests, trusting that the ladybirds will eventually notice such a tempting free lunch. But I'm not. Tomorrow morning I am going to go out and try to blast the sap-sucking scum off my plants with a powerful hose.

(if you've time, read the wikipedia article on aphids. I knew that ants 'farmed' them - but I didn't know they hid aphid eggs in their nests over winter, carefully putting them back on an appropriate plant in the spring - how cunning is that?)

A very unhappy Euphorbia... come on ladybirds - where are you!