My guess would be an Aphid. However I'm no expert by any means. Someone will be along to verify or give the correct answer sometime tonight I'm sure. If it is an aphid, there are lots of home remedies people can tell you which ones really work.

Emma

Hi Pam,

First, welcome to the foum.

They are aphids and they will move from plant to plant.

They are relatively easy to control. You can put on disposable latex or nitrile gloves and smash them between your fingers. I don't do that, feeling it isn't the best use of my garden time, but lots of people do. You can spray them, particularly on the undersides of leaves where they tend to congregate, with insecticidal soap or with neem spray. Both are available in both concentrate form or ready-to-use spray bottles. There are tons of homemade insecticidal soap recipes (and other homemade pesticide recipes) on the internet. If you use one of them, follow the formula precisely and don't overspray the plants. While insecticidal soap will kill some insects, it also will function as a herbicide and will kill plants if you put too much soap in the mixture or if you spray it at high temperatures. With neem, it can be toxic to some beneficial insects, so try to time your application to parts of the day when bees are not active.

My favorite way to control aphids is to let the lady bugs gobble them up and control them for me. Of course, this only works if you have lady bugs in your garden. When we first moved here, we didn't seem to have many lady bugs around. I planted lots of flowering plants to attract them and also bought and released some, and we have had ladybugs ever since. This year we had lady bugs here in early spring long before I saw any pests, so it hasn't been a bad year for aphids. I expect the lady bugs are eating them about as soon as the aphids show up.

I won't spray any sort of broad-spectrum pesticide in my garden because I rely on the beneficial insects like lady bugs, spined soldier bugs and green lacewings to control pest insects. When I have a problem insect, I don't spray the whole garden. I wait until I see that insect on a plant, and then I either hand pick it or use some other control method. If I have to spray something, I try to use only a narrow-spectrum organic pesticide that won't hurt the beneficial insects, and I spray it only on the plant or plants that has the pest insects on them right that minute. Even then, I don't really spray the plant...I stand there with a spray bottle in my hand and spray the specific insect.

Aphids come in all colors. You can Google and find a million photos. They are especially attracted to plants that have been fed high-nitrogen fertilizers, so if you are using a nigh-nitrogen fertilizer, do your plants a favor and fertilize them less. I do not routinely feed all my plants. I feed the soil by working to build its fertility, and I let the soil feed the plants.

Dawn