Greenfly: It's time for an intervention - I'm bringing in the ladybird larvae!

Well, I'm getting kind of tired of squishing a seemingly neverending supply of greenfly everytime I go past my rose bush. They're really starting to annoy me, especially as the rose is now close to flowering and so they're interfering with my appreciation of the soon to be flowers, as each time I look at the pink colour of the bud I can't help but notice some green bug walking over it. Argh!

So, i've decided that it's time for an intervention and have ordered some ladybird larvae through a company on the internet. I decided on the larvae as a) You get more larvae for less money than you do adult ladybirds, b) I figured that they'd be less able/likely to go and eat other people's greenfly as they're not so mobile, being as they lack wings!

Today, they I found an envelope with this little box in awaiting me on my return from work:

I've followed the instructions and sprinkled them, in the evening, around various of my plants. Now i'm awaiting what I hope will be a greenfly massacre... although the larvae did seem very small so i'm worried that the greenfly might fight back. I'll just have to wait and see... here are two larvae on my rose bush off hunting aphids! (but you can see from the photos just how small they are...)

Return of the aphids

Well, amazingly, a month on the magnolia is STILL flowering! What a plant!

Unfortunately, not everything in my 'garden' is looking so happy... over the last few weeks this seasons aphids have arrived and are going strong. It seems that they attacked the lavender's first, which I guess may not have been too happy after the winter since Scotland isn't exactly the mediterranean type climate that they prefer. Bizarrely, one lavender has faired much better than the other, despite both being heavily infested. I'm not quite sure why this might be, but unless the really sick looking one puts out some new growth and improves soon I'm thinking I might send it to the great compost bin in the sky! The lavenders were both plants I bought last year, a variety of Lavandula stoechas (French lavender) called 'Jamboree' and I suspect that they simply were not really hardy enough to live happily here (although one pot is ok - so maybe one side of my door way is more sheltered?). I'm thinking that I might replace the really unhappy looking plant with a more resilient and tougher Lavandula angustifolia (English lavender). Oh, I should mention that the 'happy' lavender is actually growing in a much smaller pot than the 'unhappy' lavender - so it isn't as huge as it looks in the photos!

In the meantime however, the aphids have spread to the pot of tulip leaves next to them (the flowers are mostly over), and onto my heuchera which is looking decidedly unhappy - although thankfully it is showing signs of survival as it's starting to put out new leaves. I'm thinking i'm going to bin the tulips rather than wait for the last few bulbs to flower... it's not looking good in that pot!

I need to find a solution and am considering ordering some ladybirds through the post. Either that, or making up some sort of organic spray to wash over the leaves as I'm not keen on using an insecticide. The only problem is that as the plants are in containers, I'm concerned that the spray will then become really concentrated in the compost that they're in - whereas if used on plants growing directly in the ground the spray would be more able to dissipate through the soil. I think the ladybirds would be fun to try though so I'm favouring them at the moment - unless any of you have any ideas?! Or I might try growing a pot or two of something oniony, like chives, and see if that deters them. Pesky critters... mutter mutter...