Love Your Basil,
Ramona

Just happened to find your website when I was looking for a way to get rid of pests that like to stick to my basil plants. I started planting basil last year and am on my second mini garden (we live in a townhouse in CA without a yard – everything is in pots on our balcony!) My 1st basil garden died out during last year’s winter and had so many tiny white bugs (aphids?) that I just decided to uproot everything and start again in spring.

When I started new plants, everything was going well for the first couple months, but then the bugs came again. I almost want to say that we don’t harvest the leaves enough b/c when we’re eating a lot of caprese salads and making pesto, the bugs don’t seem to be as prevalent. We’ve seen some random ladybugs hanging out, but not enough to rid us of the unwanted little buggers.

What’s weird is that the aphids don’t seem to bother any of our other plants (except for the mint – the aphids seem to like mint also). We currently have tomatoes, bell peppers, shiso, young grapefruit/blood orange/tangerine trees, pineapple, plumeria, stephanotis, and ginger flower plants. (The tomato plants and shiso have their own problems though – some kind of dry, powdery white mold & green caterpillars) Any suggestions? Sorry if this message has gotten too long! Please email if you have time! Thanks! Love your website!