here we are in september and this is our uh cucumber trellis and this time of year is starting to wind down anyway and we noticed that it was getting a bad aphid problem rather than spray the aphids and try to get rid of them i decided to sacrifice the few cucumbers that were we were going to get later in the interest of promoting some beneficial insects i'll try to get a few oh there's one right there that's a ladybug larva we've got these things all over the plant here's another one up here but they're everywhere there's another one over here there are dozens of them scattered around on the leaves here and there and what i'm going to do is just uh let nature take its course here and let the ladybugs and the aphids fight it out now i've noticed that when you have quite a few aphids won't be long until the ladybugs show up and they'll lay their eggs nearby and the larva will feed on the aphids but not another thing i noticed is on the underside where the aphids usually are if you'll notice those little white dots those are aphid mummies that means a parasitic wasp as laid its eggs on that aphid and they will hatch out and turn into parasitic wasp which also can help any aphid problem so next year we'll have more ladybugs and parasitic wasp in the area just because i'm sacrificing this one plant that we wouldn't get many more cucumbers off of anyway