I have a few non-prime spots open in my strawberry tower, and I didn't want to put really good expensive strawberries in there because they'd either die or produce badly anyways. Now I'm not sure if it was a good idea, but I saw some half-off strawberry plants at the nursery yesterday and they didn't look too bad, so I picked them up.
I was 100% prepared for them to be infested with something, so I chopped off all dodgy looking leaves and all flowers right away and am keeping them quarantined inside for at least 1-2 weeks (all my other strawberries are outside on my balcony). I rinsed them off very thoroughly, first with running tap water then with slightly soapy water from a squirt bottle. the plan is to do that twice a day until I see no more bugs.
Here's all the bug varieties I found before rinsing this morning:
My guess is that it's just green aphids? Although that fat round fella from the first picture and the white guys from the last picture are throwing me for a loop, so I'm not 100% sure.
Do you think rinsing twice a day will be good enough to get rid of them?
Definitely just aphids. Soap or diatomaceous earth work as noted (though they do wash off, so they need to be reapplied after rain).
It's important not to over-fertilize any plant with aphids cause then their populations really explode. Also, for small populations like this, you can just knock them off the plant with a spray of water, a paintbrush, or my personal favorite: a cordless air duster (basically a hair dryer with no heat and a nozzle). Just knock them off every day for a week, and they should all be gone.
Don't put them close to other plants, though.