How to Remove Small Flying Insects from Phalaenopsis Orchid Pots and the Best Pesticides for Aphids and Scale Insects

Although growing flowers and plants can soothe the mind, if they are not cared for properly, they may attract a swarm of small insects that fly around everywhere. Besides ruining the viewing experience, these insects also like to parasitize plants, then keep multiplying and increasing in number. On the journey of plant care, what should you do when you run into a situation like this?

Take the Phalaenopsis orchid, the most purchased plant in recent years, for example. The insects it most commonly gets are scale insects, aphids, whiteflies and the like. These small insects land on plants with poor ventilation, then secrete fluid on the leaves of mature plants, which then causes fungal infection of the leaves, and the fungi and secretions are used to breed even more small insects.

If a Phalaenopsis orchid is infested with scale insects, aphids or whiteflies, the leaf edges where the insects secrete fluid will turn dark brown, the fungi multiply rapidly within a few days, and afterward patches of sooty gray appear on the leaf surface that feel sticky to the touch.

Although this disease will not directly harm the Phalaenopsis orchid, the mycelium on the leaf surface blocks sunlight, affecting the leaves' light absorption, which in turn affects photosynthetic conversion. At the same time, the leaves also look dirty, which affects their ornamental value.

When you run into a pest problem, the control methods are actually not difficult. First, choose a conventional Phalaenopsis orchid, because non-hybrid ones have better disease resistance. Second, provide more ventilation during care, as only this can keep out those scale insects, aphids and whiteflies. Then, before any disease appears, you can spray a little 5°Be lime sulfur mixture for prevention (buy it at a flower shop), spraying once every 10 days, twice in a row.

When the disease has already started, just wipe the sooty mold off the leaf surface with a damp cloth. If the number of insects is not large, you can first wipe with alcohol wipes a few times and it will soon be fine. You can also buy blue sticky traps for insects online and place many of them near the flower pot; the insects will fly onto them on their own and get stuck, unable to escape. Finally, if the insects have been reproducing for a period and there are quite a lot of them, spray with 50% fenitrothion wettable powder at 2000 times dilution, 50% fenvalerate wettable powder at 1000 times dilution, or 23.7% iprodione water-dispersible powder at 1000 times dilution, spraying once every two to four weeks.