Most gardeners will have had some experience with the little bundles of fluff that sticks to your plants in their hundreds. They may look like tiny pieces of cotton that the fairies have been knitting on your plants, but they are a rapidly breeding scale that breeds quickly and will cover all parts of the plant.

All the rain and wonderful warm weather is creating the ideal breeding ground for aphids. Plants are sending up new shoots and flowers, thinking that spring has arrived quite early and sapsuckers are populating at the rate of rabbits. Aphids feed on new growth by piercing and sucking the sap, preferring the lovely new soft growth because these cells transport nutrients.