What to Do When Potted Plants Get Pests? Practical Control Methods Shared

  Nowadays, growing succulents has gradually become mainstream in our country. Although succulents are very easy to grow, beginners are still quite concerned about many problems. For example, what should you do when potted plants at home easily get pests? Common pests include aphids, scale insects, whiteflies, lace bugs, ants, spider mites, and so on. Most potted plants are kept indoors, and if you buy insecticides, they can pollute the air. Today we will introduce several pesticides that are both eco-friendly and effective at killing pests:

  1. Cigarette butt pest control method

  Smoking is harmful to health, as everyone knows. But many people do not know that tobacco can also kill pests. The method is to use cigarette butts (remove the filter), mix with 10 times the amount of water, soak for a day and a night, then soak the flowerpot soil thoroughly with the filtered liquid after soaking, which can kill ants in the pot; or mix equal proportions of water and the filtered liquid and then spray it on the plants, which can paralyze the pests' nerves and poison them to death.

  2. Homemade essential balm insecticide

  Mix 100 ml of water with 3 drops of essential balm and spray it on plants to control aphids, scale insects, and moth and butterfly larvae, and it can also control spider mites.

  3. Sichuan pepper water for pest control

  Boil Sichuan pepper and water in a 1:10 ratio until half the water remains, then after cooling, dilute with water at 1:10 and spray on plants to control whiteflies, aphids, and scale insects.

  4. Chili water

  Add water to chili peppers in a 1:10 ratio, boil for half an hour, and after cooling, spray directly on plants to control aphids and lace bugs.

  5. Vinegar water

  Dilute bottled vinegar with 5 to 6 times the amount of water and spray once every 3 days to control scale insects.

  6. Garlic liquid for pest control

  Mash garlic into a fine paste, add water at a ratio of one garlic clove to 100 ml of water, stir into a slurry, soak and filter, then spray on the surface of the potting soil to control ants or earthworms.

  7. Ginkgo fruit

  Put ginkgo fruits into a mortar and mash them, add an equal amount of water, and filter to obtain the stock solution. When using, take the stock solution and dilute with water at a volume ratio of 1:2 for spraying to control aphids.

  For people who grow succulents, the one pest they cannot avoid is scale insects. Summer is the peak season for scale insects. Some flower lovers may have already discovered traces of scale insects. If not, then of course that is even better. Actually, even if you find scale insects, there is no need to panic too much.

  Succulents will, more or less, sooner or later, have some chance of a scale insect outbreak. The reason is that scale insects are just too powerful. They not only harm succulents, but are also the number one among the three major piercing-sucking pests in landscaping (the other two are spider mites and aphids). They harm many kinds of plants, and controlling them is also the most difficult. Another point is that scale insects like concealed environments. Dense branches and leaves are good for their survival and reproduction. Succulent leaves are not just dense, they are extremely dense, so it is only normal for them to be targeted by scale insects.

  If the insects can be seen, you can first remove them with round-tipped tweezers, then spray some carbendazim. The pest that succulents are usually prone to is scale insects.

  Scale insects are no stranger to anyone who grows succulents. Succulents basically do not have many pest problems, but scale insects are always unavoidable, and people wish they could eliminate them as quickly as possible. But you may not know that the scale insects you hate so much are also a precious economic resource insect. They have left traces in your life more or less, because they are widely involved in many industries such as food, cosmetics, and medicine. For example, the red berry dessert and strawberry Frappuccino that Starbucks was forced to stop selling two years ago were because their ingredients involved scale insects.

  The damage caused by scale insects generally has the following characteristics:

  1. Degenerate morphology. The thoracic legs are degenerated or completely lost. Generally, except for newly hatched nymphs that have mobility, once the other stages become fixed, they no longer move and feed in one place for life;

  2. They can secrete waxy substances to cover the body, forming various scale coverings. As the insect age increases, the scale covering thickens, and it is generally difficult for pesticides to reach the insect body;

  3. High reproductive capacity. For example, each female of the large jade pointed scale produces thousands of eggs; each female of the white wax cyst scale produces over a thousand eggs; the cottony cushion scale has 4 to 5 generations per year; the sugar flake armored scale can cause damage year-round;

  4. After scale insect damage, it can induce sooty mold in plants;

  5. Some environments unfavorable to plant growth lead to reduced plant growth vigor, which is favorable for the occurrence of scale insects.

  Below are methods to kill scale insects:

  1. Physical killing method

  Use a needle, toothpick, or tweezers to pick them to death one by one. This is suitable when the damage is not yet very serious, for the fat and large scale insects on the stem area or the back of leaves. Of course, I absolutely will not tell you something like behind one cockroach there are N cockroaches. I will only tell you that for a relatively formidable scale insect species, one female lays a thousand to several thousand eggs and produces 2 to 3 generations a year, as easily as playing. For a small number of scale insects, you can directly pick them to death with a needle, but note that scale insects act in groups... there may be many more in places you cannot see!

  2. Send them away

  Combined with Muxie solution, use a pressure spray bottle or a tap water nozzle to spray water on the affected areas. As long as the water flow is strong enough, it can generally wash them quite clean. Using Muxie medicinal liquid instead of tap water will also kill the individual larvae that are not washed away, because scale insects are mainly difficult to kill with pesticides in the adult stage.

  3. Alcohol killing method

  You can buy disinfecting alcohol at a pharmacy, with a concentration of 75% or above, and use a brush to dip an appropriate amount of alcohol and repeatedly wipe the affected areas, which can also remove scale insects. If the leaves are too dense and difficult to wipe, you can directly pour alcohol on the severely affected leaf center areas. It is recommended to spray with Muxie solution, and after observing for a few days, if any are still found, continue using it. It is said that fumigating with mosquito coils also works well, and everyone can try it too! If there are many scale insects, you can consider spraying with Muxie or alcohol.

  4. Spraying pesticides

  Personally, I think the most effective is Guoguang Jiebizhi. I have also used insecticides advertised as low-toxicity, such as Huhuashen, Supusha (supracide), and matrine. After spraying, the feeling was that they did not kill them cleanly. Guoguang Jiebizhi advertises itself as having strong fumigant, penetrating, contact, and stomach-poison effects, capable of penetrating the scale insect's waxy shell to act directly on the insect body, killing nymphs and adults, and also having good control effects on eggs. In addition, when mixing, you can also add a small amount of alcohol to improve the control effect, especially against scale insects that have developed resistance. It is recommended to spray in the evening or at night to avoid medicinal damage or burns caused by too strong light just after spraying.

  5. Burying pesticide

  Using the above methods, you can basically kill all the visible scale insects clean, but most scale insect eggs are in the soil, and after hatching they crawl up (so for succulents bought from greenhouses, it is best to discard the soil and properly clean the roots). In addition, there are also root mealybugs at the bottom of the roots. Burying pesticide can nip scale insects in the cradle and can also kill those unseen root mealybugs. If burying pesticide, carbofuran and Bayer's small green pesticide are both good choices. Taking carbofuran as an example, carbofuran has systemic, stomach-poison, and contact effects, with strong toxicity, a long residual effect period, fast results, no fear of rain, and low cost.