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10 Most Common Houseplant Pests: Pest Control Strategies
29.05.2023 13:08
With the start of the summer cottage season, indoor plants fade into the background, and it’s good if housewives simply don’t forget to water them.
Meanwhile, flowers on windowsills are also susceptible to attacks by pests and need preventive treatment. Here are the most popular parasites and one strategy to combat them all at once.
Expert of the online publication BelNovosti, scientist-agronomist, landscape designer Anastasia Kovrizhnykh shared several details that will help you decide on this issue.
Spider mite
It feeds on plant sap and most often makes itself known in winter in a dry environment.
Aphid
It can multiply into large colonies. The appearance of the pest is accompanied by a sticky coating on the plant, and then by the appearance of sooty fungus and viral diseases.
Thrips
It is one of the most dangerous pests. They reproduce and spread quickly, suck the juice from the leaves, leaving holes in the leaves, where white dots and yellow spots appear. Leaves and flowers dry up and die.
Scale insect
You can tell by the appearance of white and yellow spots. The plant becomes exhausted and dries out and becomes covered with a sticky coating.
Whiteflies
The females of the pest lay numerous eggs. Yellow spots appear on the leaves, and the greenery itself soon falls off, covered in sticky secretions.
Fungus gnat
They live in the soil and attack the roots, which is why the plant does not bloom for a long time, withers and sheds its leaves.
Mealybug
When affected by mealybugs, the plant withers and droops, growth slows down, and soon stops completely, and the flower is finished off by honeydew, fungus, and other diseases.
Weevil
Weevils can penetrate if you take indoor plants out into the fresh air. The consequences are not worth describing.
Nematodes
Colorless or translucent spots appear. Foliage becomes thin.
Root mite
It is dangerous for bulbous and tuberous plants. It damages bulbs. It can be identified by the uneven coloring of the leaves and the curvature of the flower stalks.
How to fight
Sick plants are quarantined. They are cleaned with a soap solution and insects are collected manually. You can treat them with a solution of laundry soap or potassium permanganate.
Infusions or decoctions are also prepared from nettle, wormwood, garlic or marigold herbs.
In advanced cases, bioinsecticides or chemical preparations are used.
