Hello! I'm new to gardening and I am building a container garden, but I have been facing a major pest issue. Aphids, loopers, spider mites, you name it. I've got in under control in most of my containers, but I just discovered a major problem. In my biggest container I have a chive transplant that I bought at home depot, and I also planted spinach and green onion seeds. Symptom 1: The seeds never grew.

I replanted a few seeds today and investigated the planter. Symptom 2: In the stiff outer transplant soil (not the soil surrounding it in the planter), there are tons of little orange balls. I assume their eggs. I've also seen a lot of small bugs in there, both aphids and spider mites, but I think moreso aphids... at least I think they're aphids. I'm worried the whole planter might be infested.

I started using an oil/dishsoap/water pesticide, but I'm not sure what to do about the eggs.

So my questions are: 1) Are these aphid eggs? 2) how do I kill the eggs? Do I need to pull out the transplant completely? Please help!

Note: I used my macro camera lens to take pictures of the eggs. They eggs are about the size of the tip of a pen or smaller.