Get Rid of Mealybugs, Gnats and Spider Mites — Plant One On Me — Ep 015

[Music] hey guys it's summer rain and I can't believe it but it is the 15th episode of plant one on me I don't know where the time is going I think I'm also approaching like almost the 50th post on Homestead Brooklyn calm as well so if you haven't checked out the blog please do because I try to go a little bit more in depth in the blog posts there and yeah I only launched it in failure so there's a lot of content up there and and I'm happy to continue to be getting all your questions I think for the 15th episode I'm going to concentrate on bugs on on bad bugs and I'm good bugs because I've had a lot of questions about bugs and you know maybe it's coming out of the winter months and getting into spring and there's a more proliferation of bugs on the new growing areas in your plant um I'm not sure but we're going to kick it off with Jay Killa cards question oh my god if you could do a video on how to get rid of mealy bugs I would so appreciate it okay so mealy bugs you may or may not have seen because surprisingly they are a cottony looking scale and type of insect to that it doesn't really move once it plants itself into a specific place it just starts to suck the plant juices out and you would think that they're very easy to see and they are if you actually look at a particular plant but they they do very hide extremely well like in like the the crotches of the tree or the plant and they tend to like succulents as well so I am nursing back a sick Hoya who kept on looking a little um shriveled and I'm like geez you know when a succulent is looking shriveled or if the cacti is looking shriveled oftentimes it just means you're not giving it enough so I didn't really look at the Hawaii so I just gave it a little bit more water it is in south-facing window and I looked a little bit closer and I saw that eventually like them following week and then I saw that it had mealybugs so again these are these white cottony like scale insects that could proliferate pretty rapidly onto a plant and just suck its juices out and make it look a little sad or sickly and you know you can you could take a little bit of hydrogen peroxide on a q-tip and just clean them off with that and I'll bill give you a little like orangie stain on the q-tip so if you have a small plant and a small infestation I would encourage you to just do that because what I'm about to tell you you may not like I don't use any type of pesticide or insecticide on my plants I mean part of it is because one I like to keep a really pure house but secondly I raise exotic insects and I feel like any type of insecticide or pesticide in the house is just going to destroy them and so I always try to play it safe that being said going back to my former entomological roots I do like to have a little bit of insect warfare so what I do every month is actually bring in green lace wings which is a type of narara it is an excellent insect native to the US and therefore if it becomes at adults and it flies out the window so be it's not a big deal and they basically eat their great generalist they'll eat anything they'll eat merely bugs will eat scale they'll eat aphids they'll eat spider mites I had a I have a question actually from Barbara one-zero-zero-one on her plants suffering from spider mites regularly and what do I do to remedy so Barbara one-zero-zero-one I will get to you in a second but let's start start talking mealybugs so generalists green lacings awesome i'll show us flash a little picture up there of what a lasing looks like an adult's they're also known as a Fed lions and boy do they really live up to that term because they are ravenous and they will decimate a feed populations as far as Athens I think that was a question that I had in subsequent our a previous video and what I do with aphids and most bugs in general is that I will take my hose and really spray hard like the best sort of ability for you to do that is spray hard with water first and then I do a monthly delivery of green lace wings I release them I do the Z I don't do the adults but I get them in I'll send you a link of like where I where I get them I get them in this like kind of like this grid and then I basically release them on the plants and they pretty much stay on your your plants and then they'll just they're kind of like my mini soldiers so if I have a plant and I see an infestation of course I'll pull that plant away from the other plant but I don't kind of freak out any longer if something is infested with mealy bugs or what-have-you when I know that I have a lacewing delivery coming up secondly so that there's two things just to summarize because I think that was all over the place summarize you could do a little hydrogen peroxide on a q-tip if you have a small plant and you just want to dab it and then I would say check it every other day or check it weekly if you don't have a lot of time and then just make sure that there's not another outbreak because insects they'll have babies and then they'll think they'll they're gone after you you decimated their population and all of a sudden their life cycles start up again and you'll notice a bunch of a bunch of new ones so that's probably the best way for mealy bugs the other way that I have and I had fun doing this but I kind of just do green lace wings now is merely bug destroyers and they are as their name suggests destroyers of mealybugs they're also called crypts and they look a little bit like a black ladybug actually they are in the ladybug family and you release them as adults and I found that a couple different things if you get the mealy bug destroyers don't wear white they are attracted to white and they will be attracted to you put them right near the general vicinity of where the mealybugs are and they will go to town on those mealy bugs if you don't put them in the general vicinity of where the mealy bug is then they're probably not going to find it and I do notice that mealy bug destroyers like ladybugs are very much attracted to the light in the home so they will flock to the windows so I found when I got near a bug destroyers again one of the downside although I don't know if so this is downside because I don't actually mind doing it but in the morning you'll see a bunch of mealy bugs on the windows so I just literally take a little business card and I scrape them off and I put them back onto the leaves where I know the mealy Bucks were but it's a lot of work it'll take like a half an hour out of your day which most of us don't have so I would suggest lace wings and I'm sure there are a lot of other pesticide options that you could do but I personally wouldn't do them so I'm not going to suggest you to do them especially if you have animals or raise exotic insects if you have children around the home you might not want to spray that kind of stuff I know that some people have used mean I I've used mean like once in a blue moon but I just find that the insects the beneficial insects are the most effective all right hope that helps Jay Killa course the next question is from Barbara one-zero-zero-one my plants suffer from spider mites regularly what remedy do you use for that so oftentimes plants will get spider mites because there is a dry condition in the house and the plant might be struggling so I had one plant in my house actually two right now that are kind of infested or one had been infested with spider mites what I'm working on and it's my my Sanchez EO which I've kind of really nursed back to health and it drinks a ton of water it's one of those plants kind of like a spicy fill and luckily I where if you don't water it starts to look really sad but it doesn't have the type of rebound potential as a spathiphyllum does so I think one day whether I was traveling or not my Sanchez iya got really dry and then I came home and had an outbreak of spider mites so spider mites love dry conditions one of the ways that you could get around that is again using I use sharp sprays of water first and I also put on the humidifier in that room and so just to get that humidity back up because spider mites don't like the humidity they prefer this dry conditions then I would shower the plant and then again sharp sprays then I brought the green lacewing Zin and the green lacewing is completely decimated the spider mite population I mean I actually wish I have footage of this with like a really good macro lens of like the lacewing going at the spider mites because I I have to tell you I mean this plant was infested I mean some people probably would have like put it out the door I mean it was literally infested with spider mites I think that they just you know had a reunion or something on this plant and I I want to tell you that within 48 hours the lace wings completely decimated the the population of spider mites and they were all very fat and happy and then became adults afterwards and we're flying around the house so I would highly recommend a releasing order new roster ah and also known as a Fed liens all right mrs. cleric says I would love to hear your remedy for naps okay naps and fungus gnats in particular I think are the bane of a lot of people's existence because I'm getting a ton of those questions I'm sure mrs. Clinton mrs. cleric that you're not the first one to ask this question I don't have all the other folks who have asked it but it's a moot point at this stage because I'm about to answer it oftentimes I find that fungus naps are attracted to really rich moist soils so when I get a compost bag in I get the sense that there was somehow not eggs in it because as soon as I open it up I feel like you're spies flying around the other place where I had a tremendous amount of mass was when I was growing my own mushrooms edible kind not the psychedelic kind in the house all that like rich compost the bed of wherever the - and mycelium is growing off of I just attracted fungus gnats to no end and I tend to get them not in the winter months but just kind of in the spring in the summer months and they breed like crazy and they really aren't going to severely affect your plant they're just flat out straight annoying so the best way that I found that literally kills them within 24 to 48 hours is something called mosquito bit it's made out of BTI but bacillus thuringiensis or something along those lines it might be mispronouncing a little bit incorrectly but BGI is a type of bacteria and it only affects flies so if you have standing water outside in a birdbath for instance and you have a lot of mosquitoes or if you have slides or any type of thing that that's in there you can just drop you two it's completely fine for you to eat for any birds to eat it's just going to affect flies so what I do is actually take the mosquito bit I don't know if I have them let me see if I have them and I'll be right back okay I cannot find them this place is like a black hole sometimes I put something somewhere and then I completely lose it it actually might be outside but I'm not going to go outside to look for it but um yeah you know I will hold on a second I'm glad I did go outside okay guys here it is mosquito bit yes this is what it is so what I do is actually soak this in the water and then I use that soaked water to water the plants and yeah you're not going to have any fungus gnats anymore what can I tell you it's um it's extremely effective you might have to wait a day or two but use this but you could give it in like sticks you could get it in like little round circles and I've never seen it as a soluble material so but I'm sure it exists out there but yeah fungus gnats no more again highly effective it's a biological agent much in the same way that the green lace wings are biological integrated pest management solution I think that this is the best way specially if you're growing food because you don't want to you don't want to spray anything on your plants that is going to be detrimental to your health or anybody else's health so so just just do it the right way in the good way in the effective way all right hope that's helped helpful so yeah so we went through spider mites we went through mealy bugs and we went through fungus gnats so I think that's all we have for today because that is a big episode 4 episode 15 so if you haven't yet follow along at on Instagram at homestead Brooklyn and if you haven't yet tuned into the blog at homestead Brooklyn calm and I should share that I am doing workshops all different types of workshops so if you're in New York and you're interested I'm doing houseplant 101 and and herbs three ways indoors on your balcony and in a regular raised bed or garden outdoors and I'm doing a photo porn garden tour in in Williamsburg Brooklyn with the Apple Store which is totally cool and a bunch of other great workshops as well so you could tune in there at Homestead Brooklyn comm slash workshop so thanks again guys keep your conversations flowing and your questions coming and I will tune in with you later bye

Channel: Summer Rayne Oakes

Views: 323,909

Keywords: Summer Rayne Oakes, sustainability, environment, mealybug destroyers, mealybugs, get rid of mealybugs, common problems of household plants, fungus gnats, insects on plants, green lacewings, aphid lions, spider mites, cure for spider mites, spider mites on plants, houseplants, houseplant, Plant One On Me, Summer Rayne, Homestead Brooklyn, plants, greenery, plant pests, get rid of plant pests

Id: SnZiLZrK-lk

Length: 16min 3sec (963 seconds)

Published: Thu May 25 2017