WHEN APHIDS COME CALLING, WE KNOW WHAT TO DO BY MEE’AH BRITTO

June 4, 2025

I had the pleasure of attending the NY SunWorks 14th Annual Youth Conference and I loved my experience with being on the press team. I learned so much from each and every presentation and I enjoyed being able to interview different groups and understand different perspectives from people.

I interviewed Miles, Rohan, DJ, and Parker from PS 199 Jessie Isador Straus in Manhattan for their presentation entitled ‘Bad bugs. Bad bugs. Whatcha gonna do?’ They explained their journey of growing lettuce and everything they did to help the lettuce in their hydroponic lab.

They had a great experience, but they had one problem: aphids.

“Aphids feed on sap, making our lettuce weaker. They also carry diseases, which make it harder for us to eat what we grew, so we needed to move fast,” they said.

Each presenter talked about the difficulties they faced trying to get rid of aphids and the different approaches they tried to resolve the issue: “Strong sprays of water, natural repellents and better bugs such as ladybugs, lacewings and hoverflies helped, but due to the aphids’ size it was hard to get between every groove and crack in the lettuce,” they said.

Their main focus was to get rid of these bad bugs because of what they can do to their lettuce and the rest of their plants. Even though they didn’t fully solve their problem, they are determined to find a better solution using next year’s hydroponic lab. This is very important to them because they believe that once they find a solution, they will be able to help other people who face the same problem.

This experience taught me to be more observant to the plants that I grow and that protecting plants from pests keeps them healthy.