I've said it before, and I'll say it again, this has been a strange season. The aphid is normally a pest that we see throughout the growing season on many different types of crops. But this year they've been all but absent, until now. Aphids are small, soft-bodied insects that are often found on the bottom sides of leaves where they suck sap out of plants. Aphids can cause several types of damage, but because they do not make evident holes in the leaves like grasshoppers or horn worms, they often go unnoticed until secondary symptoms start to show up. One of these is when diseases show up in the plant. As an aphid feeds it can also spread viruses such as cucumber mosaic or zucchini yellow mosaic. And the problem is, once the virus is passed on to the plant, little can be done. Another symptom is when sooty mold shows up on a plant. This is a black fungus that we have found recently on vegetable plants, such as eggplant, as well as on trees such as spruce or pine. This comes about as a result of honeydew being exuded out of the aphid as it feeds. The honeydew is full of sugars, providing a good location for the fungus to grow. This can interfere with photosynthesis as well as taking away from the aesthetics of the plant. In soybeans where the soybean aphid is found, the loss of sap due to the large number of aphids feeding on them can also be enough to cause a yield loss. Luckily, we have many beneficial insects that feed on aphids. But still, the only way to know if nature is taking care of the problem for us is to monitor the plants. The vulnerability of our late planted beans makes this even more important. In soybeans, we can get up to 250 aphids per plant with the plants under stress before we need to treat. For vegetables, we normally use the threshold of a third of the plants having clusters of aphids on them. And for landscape ornamentals, aesthetics can come into play, treating when you see more honeydew than you would like to on the plant or on your car under the tree. ------ This will be my last article as Agricultural Program Coordinator with the Wayne County Extension Office. I have enjoyed serving you over these past 30 years. Your questions have allowed me to grow in knowledge. And with these articles, especially the last two years, I've tried to soften the rural-urban interface and show that whether urban or rural, growing field corn or a flower bed, we are all farmers at heart sharing some of the same problems and the same joys of seeing our efforts come to fruition, as well as a reliance on the same farmland for our well being. Extension has been a great institution to work for, and I hope, with your support, it continues to serve you well for years to come.