Show, last weekend. Three plants I purchased were from the same vendor. I have had all of the plants I bought that weekend on the same table, in the same room for a week.
Edited to add: My flame thrower post was more of a vent. I've never had to deal with mealybugs before, or really any sort of pest. I had one plant come home with fusarium. When I discovered the issue, I tossed it and replaced it with another plant that I liked better that's growing much better for me than the one that I'd had before, so that worked out ok. I found that one of my african violets was infested with aphids, tossed it... and then found that my other two african violets had thrips and tossed those. No more clearance rack plants for me!! I'm okay with that too.
At this point, I'm concerned that with a week of these plants sharing a table, they're all infested. I'm willing to repot all of them, had planned to when they dropped their blooms anyway. The masdie is the one I'm most upset about. I've been excited about it and doing all of this research and reading before getting one, and then I finally get it home and the thing has bugs! I know that pests happen in orchid growing, I can deal with that, it's just frustrating and I needed to get over being mad so I can wrap my head around the problem.
I've checked over the other plants and haven't seen any signs of mealy bugs, but that doesn't mean that they aren't there, so what I'm gonna do for this weekend remove all of the other plants from that room and put them in another spot in the house, away from my usual growing space and watch them for a while. I'll make sure to separate all of the plants that came from this vendor, from the ones from other sources too.
I will take the masdie out of its pot, pitch all of the old media and try the soap solution and use alcohol on the bugs I can find and just do a lather, rinse repeat on this process until the eight week life cycle has passed and I don't see anymore bugs. If I see more bugs on the other plants, then I will just break out the insecticide.
It will be fine as long as the orchids i've spent the last year caring for don't get infested too.
Threaded Mode
