The Good Guys

The aphids have been real bad lately, especially around the pumpkins lately, and between that and the powdery mildew, it been getting me concerned lately as to how much longer my pumpkin plants have.  Today I tried spraying a diluted milk mixture on the leaves as I read that helps with powdery mildew.  The aphids are just insane...there millions of them probably, and they seem to congregate mostly on the blossoms, so I guess that's not such a big deal.

But today looking around I did notice some good guys around...   I've seen this fly around quite a bit, its a small metallic green fly. Here is a pic I took today:

I looked it up on Google, and found that its a long-legged fly, a beneficial insect that eats aphids and spider mites...  Cool!  Here's some info on Long Legged Fly

And as I was looking under leaves, I would find this:

See those small tan balls?  Well I had no idea what those were, so I picked a few and looked at them under a magnifying glass. I then realized they are bloated dead aphids.  Doing more research I found out they are "mummy aphids", which have been parasitized by tiny wasps.  Awesome... I've seen many of these so hopefully when they mature, more wasps will come out and kill some more aphids.

And here is a traditional good guy, a ladybug, which I found hanging around:

I wish I could get more of these to show up. I read about how in some places they are almost pests as they swarm around.  It would take a swarm of these to wipe out my aphids.

And I also noticed these things... which I then identified as green lacewing larva:

Those guys are voracious aphid eaters.   So it seems I have some help.  Just need some more of it. I need to be careful when I spray soapy water, or blast with the hose, that I don't hurt the good guys too.