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Mealybugs: The Complete Guide To Killing Mealybugs Using Science. 🧪
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Nov 23, 2022
Mealybugs: The Complete Guide To Killing Mealybugs Using Science. 🧪 🍃 K A Y T O N I K - http://bit.ly/3Gj2Zzl 🎥 2 N D. C H A N N E L https://youtube.com/channel/UCjui7H4Eczaoj3Z92AC-LBQ 👩🔬 G R A B A P L A N N E R Paperback Houseplant Planner: https://geni.us/NFTrl2 Paperback Garden Planner: https://geni.us/s9zc Digital Download Planners https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/GardeningInCanada 📝 S T A Y I N T O U C H Join our monthly newsletter! newsletter.gardeningincanada.net Website/Blog & FREE printables: https://gardeningincanada.net Join The Newsletter: https://newsletter.gardeningincanada.net
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0:00
Hello plant people, how are you? It's me today. If you're new around here, my name is Ashley and I like to take science and apply to all things plants
0:06
In today's video, we're talking about mealybugs. Now I haven't had mealybugs in a hot minute
0:12
That's because I really haven't bought any house plants in a hot minute
0:17
So I used to have to quarantine all the plants I got from pretty much anywhere in Saskatoon
0:23
because all of them carry some form of bug they can come from the actual
0:30
greenhouse or nursery completely okay I get home leaving for a week or two and
0:36
bam I have bugs now the greenhouse I went to always has had mealy bugs every
0:41
plant I've ever gotten from them mealy bug and the two calatheas I purchased
0:46
also have mealy mealy bugs and you're probably wondering Ashley what would
0:50
possess you to just go buy a random amount of these guys. And the reason for this is because
0:58
I intended to use these for the liquid dirt experiment. So I settled on these guys because
1:05
they're particularly sensitive to fertilizers. They're sensitive to salts and they are plants
1:11
that are going to tell you what's up. I had some liquid dirt sent to me by Gold Leaf Botanicals
1:18
out in Ontario so go check them out on Instagram or go check out their shop really cute little
1:24
company but the reason why they gave me this was because they only brought it in due to the demand
1:30
caused by you know the rock the ruckus caused by this company so they were kind enough to send me
1:37
these and these were the plans I was going to use for that however in the name of science you can't
1:44
start with a bummed out plant to begin with unless you're you know in gonna study the effects of mealy
1:50
bugs and how XYZ protects them so unfortunately I'm going to have to wait now until I can cure
1:58
these guys of the mealy bug disease we're at a standstill until that gets down now and of course
2:03
I'm going to use reliable resources in regards to research that has been done on effective ways to
2:10
actually protect your plant against mealy's so let's get into it now mealy
2:15
bugs can look different there's seven different types of mealy bugs the ones I
2:20
currently have are the long-tailed mealy's and they don't they they survive well in warm climates which is why they survive so well in greenhouses
2:30
and if they are in an exposed position and the greenhouse is using biological
2:35
control such as lacewings or ladybugs we won't see them until we get them home and the larvae
2:41
hatches in these little nooks and crannies so that's where mine are beginning to develop the
2:47
mealy bug in and of itself is a sap sucker meaning they don't move particularly fast they're not
2:54
winged creatures that spread well they only really spread along the plant highway if you have one
3:00
in your plant room or among your plants and essentially the plant highway is when you have
3:04
plant a attached to plant b and the leaves are touching and they're able to move across the leaf
3:12
barrier otherwise they move relatively slow and so if we quarantine these plants or put them in a
3:17
separate room they will tend to recover on their own as long as the infestation isn't too much
3:23
and they will not spread to your other plants in your house so long as you keep them isolated
3:27
Now with any plant issue I have a saying called nature tax I usually have a t for now it 30 percent or less is just the nature tax it the tax that mother nature charges for you to just enjoy
3:43
plants as is meaning if less than 30 percent your plant is covered or there's less than 30 percent
3:50
damage to your plant this applies for disease environmental mechanical say my dog decides to
3:56
half or three quarters of this plant um meaning bugs anything like that if it's less than 30
4:01
it's salvageable and the plant will recover just fine if it's over the 30 nature tax you may want
4:08
to consider just throwing the plant out because the likelihood of recovery is lowered and then on
4:15
top of that the recovery time frame how long it's going to take that actual plant to bounce back
4:21
is just expend exponentially grown in size so what would typically take a plant to start you know
4:28
putting out new growth and growing happily it can take you know two three times as long if more than
4:34
30 percent of the plant is damaged now the 30 30 percent tax nature tax that i'm talking about is
4:42
simply just a good way of looking at photosynthesis and how much biomass the plant needs above ground
4:49
to support the below ground biomass and if that biomass has been disrupted or destroyed in some
4:55
way it tends to take longer for it to jump back because what will happen first even after we've
5:01
treated and fixed the issue the plant needs to then almost modify or bring the roots into symbiosis
5:10
with how much upper biomass there is so if you have a big root biomass and over 30 of your plant
5:16
has been damaged then you don't have enough upper biomass to do photosynthesis produce the
5:23
carbohydrates needed the sugars for to support the root mass below and so we do have to incur
5:28
some root mass die off and then eventually the plant will be able to balance itself out and focus
5:34
on the two areas one of which we don't usually see um grow and develop in order to make the plant
5:42
healthy so with that being said if you're under 30 there are things you can do so let's get into it
5:48
so step one of when you have a mini bug infestation that you need to absolutely must consider
5:55
is not fertilizing in particular not providing any nitrogen now nitrogen as a nutrient is
6:02
essential to plants but excess nitrogen or just nitrogen in general can allow for new growth and
6:10
And right now we want to try to minimize as much new growth as possible. Remember, these plants are sap suckers, meaning they're in there for the juices
6:18
And if they have a newer leaf that ultimately is softer and doesn't necessarily have that cuticle built up or that outer layer of our leaf built up
6:28
these leaves or stems, areas of the plant are much easier for the mealy bugs to infest and ultimately cause damage
6:37
So back off on fertilizer and in particular nitrogen, the goal here is to contain what's
6:44
already present without giving them fresh, easily accessed source of food. So there is biological control methods you can use
6:53
Now keep in mind that these rule involve flighted friends in your home
6:58
And the two big ones are lacewings and ladybugs. Now because they do have a really tough outer coating almost like a waxy outer coating things like predatory mites and that don do as good of a job as things that have actual mandible crushers like the lace wings or the ladybugs but like I said these are big critters
7:20
that you would have to have in your home on your plants in order to take care of the issue and this
7:25
may be something that you're interested in if you have a plant room or a larger area that you need
7:29
take care of the next method is chemicals so there is zero I repeat zero
7:38
effective known treatments for chemical sprays or anything like that and this is
7:45
cited right out of the of California's agriculture division they said that
7:51
there's non chemical if the non chemical methods are usually good enough meaning
7:57
the biologicals and that home and garden insecticides are not particularly effective on these guys and again it comes down to that really tough outer
8:06
coating that makes it very difficult to actually penetrate the shell of that
8:11
mealy bug and ultimately kill it what they do recommend though for the adults
8:16
in particular is a spot treatment with isopropyl alcohol so this has to be a
8:21
70% or less solution and what you would use is a q-tip or a cloth or a paintbrush
8:28
and you would take the isopropyl alcohol and apply it directly to the adults that
8:32
you find and that means you'd have to you know sit there for a little while I
8:36
do find that the monocle type lenses can really help you find them a little bit
8:43
faster so that may be something that you may want to use to get this done but
8:48
that is kind of the most effective treatment if biologicals are not an option for you now they do
8:54
recommend that you test spot a treatment area just to see how the plant real reacts to the solution
9:00
of isopropyl alcohol you're using to determine how much damage it does and whether or not you're
9:05
willing to incur that damage remember 30 or less from any form of damage whether it is you know
9:12
mechanical human-made damage from isopropyl alcohol or the mealybugs is just fine so if it's giving
9:17
me like a little burnt spot or something I wouldn't really stress about it so
9:21
long as it will only affect less than 30% of the plant what they do say is that
9:26
if you wanted to actually treat a plant where 10 to 25% of the plant is infested
9:33
with the actual mealy bugs you can put the isopropyl alcohol in a spray bottle
9:37
now before you say I thought you said insecticides are not used isopropyl
9:42
alcohol is not considered an insecticide it's not an approved insecticide by any
9:46
means so do keep that in mind but you can apply it to the plant so you would miss the plant down
9:53
and you would have to repeat this process every one to two weeks as needed until the infection is
9:58
gone so that is something to keep in mind what a number of the different universities
10:04
and horticultural departments in universities do say though is that things like neem or insecticidal
10:09
soaps while they don't work on the adults because of that waxy cuticle finish on the outside of
10:16
of the adult bug they do say it will work on nymph and the actual smaller forms of the mealy bug
10:24
because they have not yet developed that waxy protective exterior so if you use horticultural
10:30
soap or neem or whatever in conjunction with isopropyl alcohol and you know potential manual
10:37
removal depending on how serious the infestation is you could actually combat it with some ease and not as intensively as before Keep in mind the goal here is to get the babies so the adults while they lay you know between 100 and 200 eggs at a shot uh several times a year
10:59
they once they're done their life cycle they're done they're not going to produce anymore so we always want to attack the babies whenever possible and so one of the ways to do this would be through
11:08
insecticides because they're able to actually penetrate the infected areas but keep in mind the areas that they put the actual babies are in the folds and
11:20
the cracks and that sort of thing which is why what I like to do personally is
11:24
blast them under the sink so these guys I just did you can notice the leaves are
11:29
very wet so I actually went in and I blasted in between all these areas and
11:34
And the other thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to actually remove the dead bits
11:40
So wherever I had an old leaf kind of encompassing or a bract helping lead a leaf that has now decayed, those will be removed because those are areas that they will actually lay the eggs
11:51
and it will allow for the penetration of you know the pesticide if you choose to use it or the water
11:57
in this case to actually blast the mealy bugs off to get their job done with uh the minimal amount
12:04
of interference one thing that is common also across all of them is that if you're using a
12:10
systemic insecticide pretty much all these universities are saying that they are less
12:16
effective against mealybugs than any other sap sucker out there so it's one
12:21
of the sap suckers that apparently are able to get away with damaging plants
12:27
still regardless and they do say that if it's in an outdoor flowering situation
12:32
that you should never use a systemic pesticide because you do want to be
12:38
mindful of the potential damage it could do to beneficial bugs like the
12:42
pollinators and that sort of thing so while they do work they're not 110% the
12:47
one type of insecticide that they said works the best are the ones that contain
12:52
pyrethroids so these ones work better than the oils or the soaps that are out
12:58
there but they do say again that this is not you know a fail-safe it will not
13:04
necessarily get all of the bugs because they tend to go in the cracks in the
13:08
crannies so you need to monitor the plant or the plant populations as needed. With these bad boys
13:14
I'm going to rinse them with water. I'm going to spray them down with Endol because I'm dealing
13:19
mostly with the egg area so that kind of cotton ball-y looking glob where you can't really see
13:27
much other than that you know dusting and so that's a sign that I have a lot of babies. So in
13:32
order to take care of those I will just use Endol in this case and I will blast the plants with
13:38
water for the next week or two. I want to thank you guys so much for watching. If you enjoyed the
13:42
video, be sure to give it a thumbs up, hit that subscribe button, and let me know in the comments
13:46
down below if you've had mealybugs, if you typically just huck the plant, or if you try to
13:51
save them to the best of your abilities. I will talk to you guys next time. Bye! Thank you
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