Mealy bugs - how to identify and destroy them.

hi guys my name is sean i'm a house plant enthusiast from jakarta indonesia i'd like to nerd out to the science behind how we can keep our houseplants happy and to multiply them in our home so if you're into that kind of content please do subscribe to my channel and send me likes so this uh dracina twister actually prompted today's video i've been wanting to do past videos for a long time but i just couldn't get to it so today i guess we're just gonna cover mealy bugs uh and then i'm gonna show you what happened to this guy basically looked a lot happier and more erect before and i just walked by it one day because i neglect my dracaenas and i noticed it was droopy so i looked up close and sure enough there were a lot of mealybugs on it they're having a massive party and yeah i'm going to show you another plant a croton that i treated last week for mealybugs that is doing well so we have a croton here in my balcony that last week suddenly drooped like crazy i don't know what's wrong with it because i've had him for a while and he was growing happily for me for a while and i looked under the leaves and surprisingly it was covered in mealybugs um and let me see i actually man that's a bad one i actually didn't wash this off because i wanted to show you guys so this is the carcass of the mealybug i sprayed them down a week ago with my um with the solution that i'm going to show you in a bit and this plant started perking back up again so i'm actually going to uh clean off the mealy bugs uh on this plant as soon as after i finish this video i'm actually going to spray it down one more time because you should spray down you should break the life cycle of the mealy bugs so yeah and then maybe i will clean off again the leaves in a bit so mealybugs actually very very slow-moving pests you can't really see them moving with your naked eyes and how they got to your plants is quite interesting actually usually ants put them there they have a symbiotic relationship in nature there are bffs so basically what happens that the ants would protect them they would put them up to the spots and they would eat the sugars from the plants and then they would poop and their poop would be sugar for the plant for the ants actually one time i was uh lifting up one a pot and then i was really horrified to see that on the underside of the pot there was a lot like a nest of ants and mealy bugs they were actually mealy bug babies the ants were actually harvesting the the mealy bugs that's a pretty freaky scene to see so yeah mealy bugs will actually cause your plants to decimate you will cause them to droop and you will see visible signs of stress they can live on the top of the soil on your leaves and you can see them they're usually white specks although i've seen yellow colored mealy bugs with like red heads super funky looking yeah they usually live on the top of the soil but they can also live in the soil this is more difficult to get rid of i have a philodendron varicosum like over there i can see you right now and when i was it wasn't growing much at all for me and i just couldn't figure out what's wrong with it so i lifted it out of this pot and surely enough there are really bugs clinging onto the roots so sometimes they do live in the roots of plants so one way you can notice them is if you see them in decline do check the foliage and then the roots were possible if the meaty bugs are in the roots actually what you can do is do a neem oil soil drench so i'm about to show you my neem oil solution that i work with you can actually make a big batch of that and just pour it into your pot just water your plants saturate thoroughly and it will kill any of the meaty bugs that are in there alternatively you can also use this chemical fertilizer i think it's called varada that i use so did i say fertilizer or pesticide i don't know but it's a pesticide sorry i it's like late in the day um so yeah you would sprinkle the the fluoride on this uh chemical for pesticide on top of the soil and as you water it or as it gets rained on the the chemicals will kill not just mealy bugs but many other pets that live in your soil so okay so i'm going to show you guys how i mix up my pesticide solution so the first thing that you want to add is any kind of soap i just tend to use this one because it says powered by plants i don't know if that helps but um it's supposed to be free or clear of certain chemicals or fragrances or dyes i'm just going to add like like a dash and the way you want the reason why you want to add salt is actually to as an emulsifier because you're about to add neem oil over here which doesn't mix with water so if you're only mixing neem oil in water it's gonna separate it's never gonna mix well um and i've never actually measured any of my uh mixes so i just kind of eyeball it like like that much like a little pore neem oil smells really really bad by the way and then the next thing i'm gonna add is optional this is actually a chemical uh insecticide this is the brand name not advertised by the way uh and i just add a few drops this smells really bad too and actually you would want to wear goggles and gloves when you handle this because you don't want to get it in your eyes so i just put about i said uh i wanted about 10 drops i dilute everything i don't believe in using any full strength of anything and so far this solution has worked really well for me then add some water not too full close the bottle any any bottle oh any bottle will work for this so you want to give it a good shake okay and then a spray bottle neem oil should only be applied during the evening right before sundown because it's photosensitive just like a lot of essential oils like your citrus essential oils and your cinnamon and your roast hip oil these are all photosensitive you don't want to put that on your skin because it will give you a bad reaction right in combination with sunlight and then now that it's in here i just want to keep adding water and you're all set this is actually the solution that you're going to spray down uh your plant with and i want to remind you guys to have your goggles and your glove all right so i'm going to go ahead and spray spray it down like really well again it's about 4 30 p.m so the sun is coming down it's not gonna get any photosensitive issues i'm just gonna really spray it down make sure that you get the underside get all the leaves and then when you're done this is actually in a cover pot let me get it out of the pot yeah you can just hear them screaming and dying in there and in my experience after you spray them down they recover and they perk up like within a week and it feels so amazing when you see your plants perk back up again from a pest attack secretly i kind of i kind of enjoy working with pests because of that i know it's a sick idea but trust me you guys if you uh have faith in your past treatment and you follow through with it you're gonna have a lot of success and your parents are gonna be happy okay so i'm done i'm just going to leave it alone for now and normally i have leftover pest spray or whatever they call this neem oil solution i would always spray it in my other plant just to finish up the the bottle and usually i go with for the allocations first because especially the underside of the allocations because they are very very spider mite prone and this sabrina has gotten so many spider mites it gets it every month i would say yeah so go ahead and spray it down uh yeah and i've got a few more allocations here they're usually the culprit for spider mites i will cover spider mites in another video so i'm filming with one hand i'm trying to and get all of the undersides as well so yeah you get the point another thing about mealybugs is that they love hoyas they love them so much they don't know what to do yeah uh i ever since i moved my hoyas outdoor i don't really see them they tend to like to congregate around hoyas that are indoors for some reason so if you see um white specks on your hoyas go ahead and treat them right away yeah i don't see any here and another telltale sign for uh mealybugs and i'm so sorry i don't have that many mealybugs right now to show you guys is that sometimes you will see ants crawling around the plant and the ants will lead you to the mealybugs all right so i hope that i helped you gain confidence in taking care of your mealybug problems and then i covered almost everything i know about them meanwhile do take care and stay safe and i'll see you in the next episode bye

Channel: onlyplants

Views: 9,831

Rating: 4.9707794 out of 5

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Id: -Ju02FjU_sE

Length: 10min 16sec (616 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 02 2020