How To Control Houseplant Pests (Spider Mites, Thrips, Mealybug, Fungus Gnats...)

hello everyone my name is Nick and today I'm gonna answer a question that I get asked quite often which is how do I deal with house plant pests in my home or more often as do I have house plant pests on my home and the answer is 100% yes I have been dealing with house pet pests since the first year that I have had houseplants which was very disheartening for a beginner gardener and it was quite literally a nightmare one of the first times I brought home was a palm and it was covered in thrips or they came in through the window and they just spread all over my other plants and although those plants are no longer with us to this day so they did a number on my home and it was just as I said very disheartening as a beginner gardener so I wanted to share with you guys the tips that I have accumulated over the last few years on how I deal with house plant pests and I have been able to control the pests really well or keep them at bay is a good way to put it because we're not necessarily able to eradicate the pests from my arm at least when we are in a situation like I am when I have a bunch of plants all throughout my home I have over 400 plants so you can imagine there's always a pest somewhere in some case so the pests that I deal with in my home are mainly spider mites thrips and mealy bugs so I've been dealing with spider mites and thrips for a number of years but the mealy bugs are actually quite new to me so I think my past methods are working quite well with them but it's just something I have to be more diligent about because it's something I'm not as used to compared to the other ones so there are a few products I use and I quite literally swear by so kind of speaking back a little bit on some products like don't really care for so there is one product in particular that I see a very common sold and I see it recommended a lot and I'm sure it works for many people what it just does never work for me and I've used it for a number of years and it's just never been my cup of tea and it's neem oil so you're gonna see a lot of neem oil sprays and a lot of information about neem oil if you're looking into how to deal with house plant pests so I was using the neem oil to attempt to get rid of the threats when I first started and not only did it not really work for me whatsoever but it just smells horrible it smells like oranges are rotting it's just such a horrible smell so I ended up stopped using it and I actually turned to Instagram if I'm not mistaken and I asked I was like what are you guys using to care or your houseplant pass because neem oil is not working for me and I've tried a few other alternatives and they're just not exactly doing the trick and many of you actually recommended the product called Captain Jack's dead bug brew which is what I'm holding right here so this is by a brand called bonide and this is a product that you can find quite readily in any garden center or plants chopped or even on Amazon or probably even a big-box store so this is something I highly recommend using so this is an organic spray and what it is is spin acid spray so spin acid is what's actually in a lice shampoo which is quite interesting but it says right here on the front that it even works on spider mites which is something we'll touch on a little bit later but it kills thrips spider mites larvae of many other things or for outdoor pests that we're not going to be touching on today this is a product I love anytime I see that I have spider mites on a plant or thrips on a plane I just take it into the shower or if you have the means of taking it outside I would definitely recommend to taking your plant outside to spray with any spray that especially one that contains some sort of chemical by any means and I just sprayed the plant down and I let it chill in there for a little while while it drips dry and that's how I deal with a plant pest if I find it right then in there it's something that I always have around and it's something I definitely recommend you guys keep around if you are dealing with house plant pests there is another product that I do recommend buy the same brand bonide that is a little bit of a different product so this is house plant systemics so this is a granule or a powder that you go ahead and mix into the soil so well the captain jacks dead bug brew was a spray that you spray directly onto the plan this houseplants systemics insect control as it says on the label is a powder that you're gonna mix into the soil and you're going to water it and when it's the appropriate time basically if your plants are still wet you're not gonna want to water this in because you're probably gonna over water your plant and that's an issue of its own it's more about pesticides so this is something something that you would not want to keep around if you have pets that are really nippy on your plants or young children that might be dealing with your plants in the knowing type of fashion I have really no issue with any of the plants that I am treating with this with my cats getting in contact with them so that is not something of my concern but this is a pesticide that's going to be coursing through the plants vein so that's what I love about it that the plant is going to be just like having this going throughout its veins and the bugs try to eat the plant and they die which is incredible because it just keeps them at bay which is what I am looking to do now this is not an organic product as I mentioned it's definitely something I wouldn't recommend using around pets if you have pets that eat your plants more so it's not gonna do anything to them it by just being in the room but this is something I really love but as I mentioned it's a pesticide or insecticide so it's insect control so one of the issues with that is mites mites are not insects so this product is not going to work on spider mites so I find this works incredibly well on things like thrips and mealy bugs and I'm sure it would do really well if you have an issue with like aphids actually I think it even yeah it says Athens and white flies and other insects listed so what I also love about this is it's just very very easy to use I always just pull back the label and I'm always showing people this in the shop this just says like a 4 inch plant you use 2.5 teaspoons or a 10-inch plant you use a quarter of a cup which is incredibly easy I just measure it out and throw it on top of the soil I mix it in with whatever tool I'm using to measure this out and I make sure I mix it into like the top inch of the soil so that it's going to be you know really getting down there I'm not just gonna be watering it from the top it's just gonna like float up to the top it's definitely you want to treat it like some kind of like granule fertilizer that you really want to like mix into the top inch of the soil that's definitely something you want to make sure you do in a sense I'm using the Captain Jack's as an attack and I'm using this as a preventative but I also do use this as an attack method as well so I kind of use these two products in tandem and there's another product that I use for a completely different plant pests that you guys I'm sure have dealt with before or most of you had a little before which is fungus gnats so they're just not exactly a plant pests they're more of a nuisance they're not going to affect the health of your in most cases typically fungus gnats are around if you're over watering your plants so if your plants are staying too moist or if your soil medium is a soil medium that's keeping holding on to moisture too long that's likely to invite gnats so one way I actually fight off gnats in my home is using a very well draining mix I actually do not have a fungus gnat issue in my home because I'm quite often using a mix that's very heavy in perlite and orchid bark so my mixes are not staying wet long enough to harbor fungus gnats so they're really just not an issue for me but when I did have an issue with them in the past years I've used mosquito bits now this is a biological mosquito control so these are just little pellets and I think sometimes they sell them as dunks which look kind of just like a like round donut and people throw them like bird baths outside if they're like harboring mosquitoes this is called mosquito bits but it also works for fungus gnats and while how this works is you're gonna kind of like sprinkle it on top of the plants in the pot you know just on top of the soil you can also use it in a way where I will kind of just dump a few pellets into the watering can fill it up like an inch or so with hot water let that kind of just like steep if you will and then I fill it up more with cool water so it kind of just like evens out the temperature so I'm not pouring hot water on my plants and I find this works very well so how this works is oh and one thing I do want to say before end is you do want to only water this in similar to the systemics when your plants are dry or when it's time to water you do not want to water in this into your plants if they're already wet which is probably something that might be going on if you're having a problem with fungus gnats this is going to go into the soil and it's going to affect all the eggs and the larvae that are in the soil so it's not just going to magically zap away all the adults that are alive you can use yellow sticky traps I'm pretty sure it's the color that they are attracted to to get rid of fungus gnats kind of just don't fly into it naturally but this is a way to get rid of them at the source so this kills the larvae and the eggs and then by the time the adults are dead which mole only take a week or two you typically or you should not have an issue with fungus gnats after that point and that has been the case for me so there's something that I really love to use in my home now there is one more way of attacking a pest that I really enjoy and I cannot take credit for this method if you watch summer rain Oaks of Homestead Brooklyn she talks about this method a lot and that's how I learned about it last year when I was looking for a new method to deal with the pests in my home because it is just such a nightmare sometimes when you have this many plants and having pests in your home you don't want to just lug 50 plants into the shower and spread them all down and use like three bottles of Captain Jack's if you're having an outbreak so what she recommends is integrated pest management which is using beneficial insects in your home and I watched a video on it last year and I reached out to her I had a few questions just because I was kind of like worried about it but I have to say it is really an incredible way to deal with plant pests in your home when I order the green lace wings which is the type of plan a beneficial insect that I use in my home I just feel totally at ease if I see that there are too many plant pests for my liking in my home I just placed an order of these lace things and suddenly I just feel relaxed I feel like I just don't have to like lug everything into the bathroom now I should mention before I get too into this that I do want to be careful not to use some of these other products when I'm using the lace things in my home so I'm not gonna be going willy-nilly spraying the Captain Jack if I had the lace things because I pay good money for the lace wings and I don't want to kill them with products that are used to kill the pests and I also want to make sure I don't use the product too soon before I order the lace wings because then I've had the issue where I bring the lace things in and I put them on a plant that I recently treated and the lace wings just die because the plant is covered in chemicals so that is something I have to keep an eye out for when I order the lace things they come either as eggs or they come as larvae and if you order B eggs it's gonna cost a little bit more probably quite more than half the price if you're ordering larvae but you order a thousand eggs and they come in a little like total bottle it almost looks like and they're in like rice hulls or just like rice grains and you get a thousand eggs but you don't get a thousand larvae so it might seem like a better deal to get a thousand eggs but I find when I get a thousand eggs I'm getting like maybe a hundred out of it when I ordered the larvae live I am ordering them as like the amount and they come live so I'll order 400 typically and they come in exactly this so this is a cardboard little screen that they come in and they have like sheets blocking it so that they're inside their little compartments when I get them in the mail and I have to get the ship to me overnight which is why it costs a little bit more than the eggs so I think the eggs would cost me typically around 20 to 25 dollars for I think when I ordered this overnight to my area it cost me total I think around $55 but I think that is a fair price to pay for these two just quite literally take care of my problems for me so how exactly do I use this so I have this cardboard right here that's filled with my lace things and it has a screen covering each side and all you should just peel it back a little bit and I'll start to just tap it out over some of the plants so I actually had an issue with I don't think you can see it on camera here but there was a philodendron brawl marks right next to me and it just started recently putting off some nice big leaves for me and I noticed that those new leaves had thrips on them which is something I don't like to deal with and I knew I had the lace things coming so that was one of the plants I immediately treated so I just went over to it I peeled this back a little bit and I just kind of tapped it on top the least things went flying and they went to work on those threats and I actually to this day because I just got this in recently and I don't see any drips on the plant at least these few new leaves that are right within my reach here so this is something I really really enjoy I didn't even have to do anything these just went right to work one thing about this too is I understand this is an insect and I bring our insects and I'm bringing this into my home and if you are not into insects this might not necessarily be for you however I would kind of argue that plants and insects go in tandem so I would say if you are going to collect a lot of plants I would definitely recommend kind of getting used to insects because whether you bring them into your home or whether they're coming into your home there it's something you're gonna have to deal with so I would recommend using this because while they might be insects that you're bringing into your home they're getting rid of the other insects that I'm dealing with and I should say the only time I ever have these bugs on me is when I am dispersing them around the home I'll get one or two of them on my fingers during the process so perhaps you could have someone else do the dirty work for you if that's going to bother you but once they're on the plants you never notice them you notice these bugs as much as you notice the plant pests in your home and many of you might know that I have a roommate and my roommate does not like bugs when she found a few ants in her home she bought ant traps when she found one cockroach in our home she bought cockroach traps she doesn't care about these because I've been bringing these in for two years now and she knows that when I bring these in she's not gonna see them they're not gonna touch her she's not gonna see them for a second and she knows they're gonna get rid of the bugs that are already on my plant but I highly highly recommend looking into using green lace wings to treat your plant pests because it is such an easy and incredible way to deal with pests I highly highly recommend it as I said it puts me at ease the captain Jack's doesn't put me at ease when I'm lugging 50 plants into the shower and I'm spraying them all down but the lace wings totally put me at ease all righty I think that about wraps up in my video today on how I deal with plant pests with over 400 pets in my home I will definitely link all four of the products that I use that I talked about in this video today if case you are looking to get them for your own I would definitely recommend looking into summer rain Oakes's videos on beneficial insects or integrated pest management because she would have a probably a lot more to say than I do about the product it's just something I've only been doing for two years now so I do not have that kind of knowledge on this topic but I did want to talk about it with you guys today because it is something that I use and I find works really well so thank you guys so much for watching my video today if you don't already follow me on Instagram at Philly foliage and subscribe to my channel and I will see you in my next video have a great time

Channel: Nick Pileggi

Views: 156,412

Keywords: pests, pest, houseplant, house plants, house plant, houseplants, plant, plants, plant pest, spider mites, thrips, mealybug, aphids, fungus gnats, nick pileggi, phillyfoliage, philly foliage, control, treating, philodendron, hoya, monstera, peperomia, mites, kill pests

Id: nwd-MK6_k4A

Length: 14min 48sec (888 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 21 2019