I noticed my lettuce was starting to wilt and then die. It happened really fast. I could not figure out why until I dug one up. To my surprise, it had an extremely bad infestation of all kinds of bugs. Most of them I believe are root aphids. (see photos -thoughts?) These photos are taken from lettuce grown in a raised bed. I filled the raised bed with a combination of compost and garden soil from Skagit Soils, near Anacortes, WA. I also added some chicken manure from a local non hormone chicken farm here in the valley. I've been watching on youtube that having healthy soil will solve most of these pest problems. Any idea on how I can make the soil healthier so the plants can combat these infestations? Any other ideas on how to get rid of these pests?
I've had root aphids on lettuce on several occasions. They seem to be worse when the lettuce plants are not thinned. I guess that the close proximaty of the roots allows the aphids to spread easily from plant to plant. When the lettuce is spaced widely enough, the aphids aren't as bad. Presumably the wider spacing also allows the lettuce to grow faster and get to a decent size before the aphids multiply too much.
