Hi! My first post here. I just found aphids in my daylilies today. They are all the way inside the leaves at the base. From what I've read systemic insecticide is my best bet since they aren't in a place for sprays to reach but I don't want to hurt other insects. If I attract ladybugs will they even be able to get to the aphids there? I feel like I'm going to have to give up on them this year!

Aphids are not likely to kill your plants, don't give up on the daylilies! Also, please don't use a systemic insecticide. It will kill honeybees, butterflies and other insects that visit the flowers.
Naturalized daylilies are also called Ditch Lilies, because they grow in and around water. They can tolerate a lot of water and wet soil. They grow in ditches.
So take your hose and just wash off as many of those aphids as you can. If that's not sufficient, first spray them with insecticidal soap, then wash off the dead aphids and the soap. The soap does not have systemic, residual action. Once you wash it off, it's gone. So, rinse and repeat, as they say.
Always read and follow directions carefully!

Ladybugs can get aphids anywhere! I haven't sprayed anything in years & now the good bugs frequent my yard. Between the ladybugs and ghost spiders I don't think I've seen a single aphid in my garden this year!

Try to be patient. It may take a few years for the good bugs to find you but when they do you won't have to do anything. Also, ladybugs won't come if you kill off all the aphids. It often takes a couple of weeks after you see an explosion of aphids to attract their predators.

Do you have any images of these aphids? I am not sure that they are aphids at all. Down deep inside the leaves is not the typical place that I find aphids. I find them up on the softest most tender parts of a plant. Day lily leaves are not that type of place. I see them up on a bloom spike or on buds if I see them anywhere. Aphids for me stay in one place 24/7, they do not retreat into the leaves.
I use either a spray 0f 50-50 rubbing alcohol and water in a spray bottle OR Bayer's 3 in 1 Flower & Vegetable spray. I find that I get good insect control that way.

MsDoe said: Aphids are not likely to kill your plants, don't give up on the daylilies! Also, please don't use a systemic insecticide. It will kill honeybees, butterflies and other insects that visit the flowers.
Naturalized daylilies are also called Ditch Lilies, because they grow in and around water. They can tolerate a lot of water and wet soil. They grow in ditches.
So take your hose and just wash off as many of those aphids as you can. If that's not sufficient, first spray them with insecticidal soap, then wash off the dead aphids and the soap. The soap does not have systemic, residual action. Once you wash it off, it's gone. So, rinse and repeat, as they say.
Always read and follow directions carefully!

I'm definitely not using the systemic insecticide. I know it won't kill them but I don't think I'm going to get blooms on a lot of them this year. I have a few with flowers now but the plants with the dying foliage mostly don't even have buds yet. Unfortunately I can't knock them off because they are literally between leaves at the base and you only see them when you pull out the dying leaf and look inside it.

bxncbx said: Ladybugs can get aphids anywhere! I haven't sprayed anything in years & now the good bugs frequent my yard. Between the ladybugs and ghost spiders I don't think I've seen a single aphid in my garden this year!

Try to be patient. It may take a few years for the good bugs to find you but when they do you won't have to do anything. Also, ladybugs won't come if you kill off all the aphids. It often takes a couple of weeks after you see an explosion of aphids to attract their predators.

Do you think it would help to get some other things to attract them or even purchasing ladybugs would help speed it up? I also had them on my honeysuckle this year and last so anything I can do to attract more would be nice!

BigBill said: Do you have any images of these aphids? I am not sure that they are aphids at all. Down deep inside the leaves is not the typical place that I find aphids.

More than one species of aphid can affect daylilies and deep down in the foliage is not atypical. It does make them difficult to reach with treatments. Soybean oil has been tested for aphids on daylilies but made the same observation, details here:

Controlling aphids on Hemerocallis with soybean oil:
http://botanicaloils.tennessee...

From the American Hemerocallis Society:
https://daylilies.org/daylily-...

BigBill said: Do you have any images of these aphids? I am not sure that they are aphids at all. Down deep inside the leaves is not the typical place that I find aphids. I find them up on the softest most tender parts of a plant. Day lily leaves are not that type of place. I see them up on a bloom spike or on buds if I see them anywhere. Aphids for me stay in one place 24/7, they do not retreat into the leaves.
I use either a spray 0f 50-50 rubbing alcohol and water in a spray bottle OR Bayer's 3 in 1 Flower & Vegetable spray. I find that I get good insect control that way.

I don't and it's pouring here right now unfortunately. But they definitely looked like the same ones I fought on my honeysuckle and research online had a lot of mentions of them in that location.

Yes, aphids on daylilies can be deep between the leaf bases. Since they reproduce quickly they can increase to the high numbers where they can be found higher up on scapes, buds and flowers. As well, as they grow they moult and their empty skins can be found (seen, even when the aphids themselves remain hidden deep in the centres of the fans) higher on scapes, buds and flowers.
A bad infestation of aphids can kill all the leaves on a daylily. I have had that happen to daylilies that I have brought inside for the winter.
I have found that trying to permanently clear an aphid infested daylily is next to impossible. Systemic insecticides are not easily available to homeowners in Ontario so they are not an option.
Repeatedly spraying just water (with a hand spray bottle) into the centre of infested fans, until the centre fills with water and then immediately repeating for a substantial number of times after the water drains away, causes many of the aphids to leave the safety of the bottom central fan area and walk up the leaves to where they can be seen and squashed.
Repeatedly spraying the same area in the same way with Safer's insecticidal soap does the same thing but with the added effect of killing most of the aphids (without needing to physically squash them). Even with this method not all of the aphids buried deep between the leaves in the centre of the fan are killed. A few weeks later the entire process has to be repeated.
When I return the plants to the outdoors (for the summer) the aphids do not have the same population explosion. My understanding is that natural rain and sunlight helps to keep their numbers in check - at least here. In any case the aphids are not visible on the plants outdoors. They reappear in large numbers a few weeks after I bring them back inside in the autumn.
Indoors I have large numbers of ladybug beetles on the daylilies. They breed successfully indoors and I see not only adult ladybugs but also different sizes of their larvae. They are unable to keep the aphids in check by themselves and the population explosions of aphids (when I don't douse the daylilies with Safer's consistently every couple of weeks) are very damaging to the daylily plants indoors.

One year I tried putting potted daylilies into a tall container and filling the container with water until the water level was above the pot rim and higher than where the two halves of the daylily fans were visibly separated. That put the lowest part of the fan where the aphids hide when they are few in number below the water level.
After some time (I waited 15 to 20 minutes usually but also tried one to three days) I would squash the aphids that had walked up the leaves from their central hiding spot. I had hoped that all the aphids would walk up the leaves and that I could then squash them all and clear the infestations permanently. That never worked but this method did keep the aphid numbers down for considerably longer than using Safer's. It worked best of the methods I have tried but it is time consuming if the tall container is not large enough to hold many pots (or there aren't enough tall containers) and there are many pots to treat.

I have heard all sorts of suggestions for controlling deer in the garden. Almost all those suggestions work...in some gardens. Almost all those suggestions fail...in some gardens. The same is true for the suggestions for controlling pests in the garden and how those pests act in gardens. Sure, if you have a few aphids laying around out on the open leaves and they are not hiding by the thousands deep down in the foliage, a simple strong spray with a hose might control them and little damage to the plants would be done.
That is not the case normally in my garden at certain times of the year. The aphids appear in droves and they might not kill the plants (just like rust is said not to kill daylilies) but they can weaken the plants over time and make them look pathetic.
Of course, if you only grow a dozen daylilies you can take the time to hand pick beetles, hose off aphids, pluck leaves off of rusty plants etc..
If you live in a area where insects and diseases are not so harmful and prevalent, it is certainly a blessing. But as mentioned about controlling deer in the garden.. not everyone's conditions are the same. If you neighbors feed the deer to attract them, if no hunting is allowed, if fences are forbidden by the home owners associations, then your garden is probably going to be a salad bar. I spray because that is the only way I have found (after avoiding it for years) that I have been able grow plants that look acceptable to me. I still have earthworms (might be mostly jumping worms), I still have digging critters ( squirrels, opossums, raccoons, and the occasional armadillo), I still have bees, flies, and other insects. I still have butterflies (not many because daylilies don't attract butterflies like the other plants I used to grow), and I still have frogs and lizards (almost everywhere it seems) and even snakes. But, they are controlled enough that I can still have a garden that is satisfying to me.
Yes, I still have a few aphids also, but I still also get some ladybugs (domestic and and the Asian ladybugs.. way too many of them).

The daylily society describes aphids on daylilies at https://daylilies.org/daylily-...

Rather than an insecticide, there is a class of chemicals called IGRs (insect growth regulators) that stop juvenile insects from maturing to adults. I would imagine IGRs would not affect adult bees or butterflies that would visit your flowers. But any insect setting up a house and having kids on your plants would be affected.
I do not know if they work on aphids, in particular. But I cannot see a reason why not.

Hmmm. Interesting thread! I probably should check mine for aphids. Haven't noticed any damage, but have noticed a lot of paper wasps visiting the daylilies, and wondered why. Blooms are not happening here yet. Of course, paper wasps are visiting the daylilies, so that makes it hard to want to check down in there. Been stung once already this year, and had a mild allergic reaction for the first time ever. On the bright side, the darned wasps usually like to congregate under the overhang on the front stoop. Saw a tip and put up a hanging basket of marigolds on one of the columns. Haven't seen them buzzing around the door since. Only crawling on the daylilies.

plasko20 said: Rather than an insecticide, there is a class of chemicals called IGRs (insect growth regulators) that stop juvenile insects from maturing to adults. I would imagine IGRs would not affect adult bees or butterflies that would visit your flowers. But any insect setting up a house and having kids on your plants would be affected.
I do not know if they work on aphids, in particular. But I cannot see a reason why not.

IGRs would still be considered insecticides but I know some people do use neem derivatives for aphids on daylilies. One (and some other IGRs) is discussed in this article, scroll down to Azadirachtin.

How to control invasive pests while protecting pollinators and other beneficial insects:

https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/...

Well, lucky wasps getting to feast on your aphids, hawkeye.
I used to dislike wasps until I learned their part in the garden ecosystem.
Now we can tolerate each other, as long as it is only 1 or 2 at a time (I am sure the wasps say the same thing about me ).

Thank you for that link, Sue!