This weekend marked my 2nd malathion attack against the scales attempting to invade my orchid collection. I'm currently planning a 3rd assault this following weekend, followed by enhanced vigilance.
Thank you, Ray and others, for your advice following my initial dosing. Ray, the addition of a little dish soap did, indeed, keep things in suspension nicely.
As you might guess from my various questions, I'm kind of a noob to using pesticides on my plants. As a biologist (with a chem minor) I'm not a noob to handling noxious chemicals or pathogenic organisms, however, so am good about all the necessary gloves / ventilation / disposal stuff. It's more the application / interactions with the orchids themselves I'm not always sure about.
So this week's questions are:
1) I've been doing the malathion as a bucket dip because I don't have anywhere I feel safe spraying during the winter. When using it as a dip, do I just dunk in and take out? Or should I leave the plant in the dip for a few minutes? So far, I've just done the dunk, and it seems to have worked fine (no sign of bugs at all during this last treatment).
2) Before dunking, I've been giving each of the orchids a soak in clean water to let all the roots turn green. My theory is that they don't need to be absorbing malathion, so saturating the roots before dipping will minimize unnecessary chemical absorption. Does that make sense?
3) Fertilizing. While doing the malathion treatments, I haven't been fertilizing. I figure the plants can handle three weeks without fertilizer, and I wasn't sure if the malathion and fertilizers played nice together. Is that an unnecessary worry? In general, do people mix fertilizers and malathion in the same water? In other words, could I be dipping for pests and fertilizing at the same time?
Thanks again, everybody! Orchidboard is the best.
L.P.
The War Against Scale (Week 2)
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