Well, I just looked at a couple of my plants and found woolly aphids. Not a full-blown infestation, but they still suck (literally). Since I prefer to keep this war natural, I'm going out tomorrow to see if any of the local nurseries still have ladybugs and praying mantis egg cases available. Anyone have any other tips for eradication?

Praying mantises do not really go after aphids, they are ambush predators not active hunters.

Good water spray should dislodge most of them.

I wiped off all of the fuzz and smooshed all the bugs I could find. I then gave a shot of organic insecticidal soap. We shall see. I freaked out when I discovered them.

As Jon mentioned, turn the hose on they every day  

I usually do spray daily because they are all in pots; and it gets really hot here. But I took two days off after we got 12 hours straight of heavy rain, due to Tropical Storm Beryl. It didn't take long for them to move in.

Hey John i know you could probably find lady bugs and praying mantis online but if you cant there is a nursery that i know as of 4 days ago has both i think the praying mantis was 10.99 i dont know about the lady bugs if you need them and have no other choice i can pick them up and ship them to you and you just paypal me what i lay out for product and shipping just throwing it out there 

a spoon of neem oil (from a neem tree) and a spoon of kitchen dishwahs soap in a quart of water will make a spray that will kill those suckers. 

spray, especially in the axils and under the leaves and then spray again in 3 days to get the hatched eggs.  I usually repeat this a few times over the course of 2 weeks.  The oils actually suffocate the bugs. You will eradicate the buggers and this is not a harmful chemical treatment which will not harm your fruit. 

Dennis

I appreciate the offer, Anthony. Thank you. If I don't find them locally, I did find a good deal on Amazon.com. I had seen ladybugs in my vegetables earlier, but apparently I don't have enough of them to cover all of my stuff. These aphids are really the first pests I have seen. We've got tree frogs, dragonflies, buckets of spiders, a ton of little lizards, stray cats and a huge snake in the yard. It's a jungle out there.

Thanks for the recipe, Dennis. Have you used this indoors vs. fungus gnats as well? I will certainly try neem if beneficial bugs don't do the trick on the aphids.

Aka "mealybugs".  A simple dab of alcohol on them will terminate thir existence extremely fast.

You are correct, Jason. Last night, I decided to use whatever I had on hand (mostly because I could not bear to wait). I grabbed a spray bottle with my antifungal mix (ground cinnamon dissolved in rubbing alcohol) and it really did a nice job on them. Only thing more satisfying would have been to light them up once sprayed. Adding to the benefit of the spray, it likely took care of any sooty mold associated with the aphids.

Update: 1,500 speckled minions now deployed to get rid of my unwanted guests. Crossing fingers.

Given the level of wildlife in your yard, that's probably a much better option than spraying

Yeah, I have a lot of good things present that I'd like to keep alive. I just need a balance.

Some additional "natural" oils that work too:  Cottonseed oil, garlic oil, and clove oil, in low concentrations (< 1%) with water.  (Some might object to whether cottonseed oil counts as "natural"... almost all cottonseed oil probably contains some amount of residual unknown pesticides, since cotton isn't regulated as a food crop, despite its widespread use in foods).  A very light mist of that kills the aphids when sprayed on affected plants.  But sounds like you've found something that works for you, so I guess this info is just in case others are looking for their remedy.  I'm glad you've gotten rid of the little suckers.