Pests on Petunias

I saw that they have a lot of greenfly on them.I sprayed them with an all purpose bug killer, yesterday during the day.This morning some of the petals looked brown and flat, have i overdone it with the spray maybe..whats best to get rid of these bugs? Thanks

 

Were they in the Sun when you sprayed them?

Welcome to Gardeners Corner btw

 

In hindsight and forgetting the marvels of modern technology, here is a photo to show exactly what is wrong, rather than describing.

 

Yes it was in the sun when I sprayed them.

 

is it best to do the spraying at evening time, do these bug sprays not actually do any harm to the petals..?

 

Ta for the pic

It's more likely that the Sun was magnified by the spray and its that that's burned the petals, not the spray contents itself, which shouldn't harm the plant unless its one you mixed up from concentrate.

Best cure for greenfly is a bucket of Ladybirds or some hoverfly larvae

 

ill have to collect some lady birds and place them on the plants ..as for the hoverfly larve..pass lol

 

It usually balances out, unless the ants are farming the greenfly, they see off predators so they can carry on milking them.

Going off on a tangent, which I rarely do, there's a type of ant that farms mushrooms that are found nowhere else in the world

 

Welcome to GC ! Spraying them with soapy water usually works and cheaper too.

 

yes i put some fairy liquid in the empty spray bottle and doused the plants with that, but after reading advice will definatly be doing this mid evening and not during the day..but thanks for advice..will no doubt be posting more queries as the week goes on lol

 

The same goes for watering too, water after sunset or on cloudy days, it's the sun that does the damage.

 

oh right..i was also looking at leaves, thinking something was at them , but after reading some comments its the wind that does most of the damage..quite interesting..lol

 

Wind does damage leaves but not usually at this time of year. The drops of water on plants act like a magnifying glass when the sun is on them and that's why they burn.