What's good (or I should say bad) for aphids and small silk worms?

General Fruit Growing
#1

Usually these are not much of a problem; aphids gets hosed away, picking silk worms out of the grown haskaps is like popping bubble wrap… not to mention that a grown haskap put enough foliage that it doesn’t matter. The problem is that this year they both attacked my haskaps and sour cherry saplings. The haskaps cuttings don’t put enough early leafing to afford any munching, and the aphids got one of my cherry saplings sick; they were not there long but the poor thing is visibly struggling to the point where I don’t know if it is going to make it.

I’m not big into spraying much of anything but what would be a good spray to keep these pests at bay on cuttings and saplings?

#2

I use insecticidal soap on aphids when they hit my kale. Don’t know silk worms.

#3

I use Surround for the aphids. I’m not sure about the silk worms, but perhaps BT would work.

#4

I have a couple of kinds of problematic aphids here, and they require different treatment. The apple aphids can be controlled with soap or neem (or both). The green peach aphids on my Burbank plum are much more difficult (and destructive). They laugh off soap and aren’t much impressed by neem, either. Pyrethrin kills them very effectively, though, as does spinosad.

Dunno about silk work treatment, though I suspect spinosad would work well.