Mold or what? - Page 3 - Orchid Board

silken · #21 06-01-2015, 01:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LoveTheLittleOnes

Mealy bugs are a big problem in my mother's greenhouse, be aggressive with them now before they spread to the others! We take the plant out of the pot and spray the whole thing down with the kitchen sink spray nozzle to get the majority of them off. Get rid of the medium and disinfect the pot. Then go over it with a toothpick and get all the little buggers that hide in the crevices. They can also get under the paper on the canes, so we remove what will come off easily. Then alcohol swab the leaves with a dilute solution and allow pools of the solution to sit in the leaf crevices for a half hour or so. Thats usually enough to irritate the ones hiding in those hard to reach spots and they'll eventually crawl out for squishing. Give it another spray with water to rinse off the alcohol and any stragglers (we worry about burning the leaves but it may be okay) and repot with sterile pot and medium. You may find a few more over the next few days but at least the plant isn't being sucked dry by hordes of them while you're waiting to find the right pesticide. The whole process takes an hour or so of actual work, but better to do it now to one plant than taking a whole day to do many once it spreads, and they will spread! Good luck!

Very good advice.

rbarata · #22 06-01-2015, 05:14 PM

Tomorrow I will proceed with the cleaning operation.

I will clean it out of the pot, to spray the roots too. I'm not sure about the alcohol in the roots.
Anyway, I will spray the den with something I've found based not on imidacloprid but on something called thiacloprid...it's in portuguese and english.
I will do it out of the pot so that I can reach the roots too.

Quote:

Then alcohol swab the leaves with a dilute solution...

Can I use ehtilic alcohol? How diluted? 5 % is too much?

estación seca · #23 06-02-2015, 02:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rbarata

Can I use ehtilic alcohol? How diluted? 5 % is too much?

Most of us use 70% isopropyl alcohol. We often buy it at the drug store.

RJSquirrel · #24 06-02-2015, 03:32 AM

that plants trashed , dont even know why you would try to salvage a plants thats a real problem..TAKE IT OUTSIDE AND BURN IT.

rbarata · #25 06-02-2015, 03:10 PM

This thread seems to have become a mob trial...KILL'EM!!!

NO! SAVE IT!!

KILL IT! BURN IT TO DEATH!!!

Well, I don't know if I saved it but I've what I could. There were so many bugs that I gave up cleaning it with cotton after a while.

I sprayed it with a waek solution of dish detergent to eliminate the stick thing those bugs produce.

Unpoted it. It was a root ball so dense that I had to excavate with my fingers to release the medium.

Then I sprayed it again with the dish detergent followed by another spray of an alcohol solution (more or less a desert spoon in 1/2 liter of water).

Gave it a bath in my tub, a long bath and it seems most of the things came off.

Then, the insecticide...the sprinkler of the bottle was defective so I had to change all the content to a bottle of my own (I will identify and hide it tonight because it seems like water). I sprayed the roots and then repoted with a new pot and new medium.

After, a new spray of insecticide, assuring all the parts of the plant were covered.

Last step, change all my cloths right away and put them in the machine washer.

Took a bath.

Now, I will isolate the plant again and wait for the results.

Wish me luck.

silken · #26 06-02-2015, 03:22 PM

Good luck. They are fairly easy to kill comparing to scale, so if you are thorough and repeat a spray in a week, and maybe another week after that, you should be able to eradicate them. I would be eyeballing all my plants that were in the vicinity of this one as well. They spread quite easily.