mealy bugs

[scousetigger]

I have had a problem with my Cereus Hildmannianus monstrose. I found a few weeks ago that it was covered in white bits of wool and loads of mealy bugs, mainly the lower half of the plant. I have taken it out of the greenhouse and is in the unheated extention away from other cacti. I have treated it the way some of the old books I was given by a friend, who grew and showed cacti in the 60's and 70's. They suggest meths and nicotine solution. I had meths and as it happened, nicotine solution, which I had made up in the summer as it is supposed to be good for greenfly on roses etc.
I removed as many of the bugs as I could with a thin artist brush dipped in diluted washing-up liquid. Then I gave the whole plant a good spray and wash down with the meths/nicotine solution. It has actually had 2 treatments now. I seem to have succeeded in getting rid of the pests on the whole, but I do check it every other day and remove any I see, these mainly being small. I did think that I may lose the plant with rather drastic measures, but worked on the principle, better to lose one than many. It seems to be surviving ok though I did have to remove some small offshoots at the base which were just soggy masses. I dried the areas they came from and dusted with sulphur. Now I want to know, will it survive ok, do I need to treat it any more and will it be ok indoors over winter as it is in an unheated room with plenty of light from a 12' window? None of the other cacti have any signs of the pest.



Post Edited (12-29-06 12:35)

[Phil_SK]

Regarding the mealy bugs I'm sure the plant won't suffer significantly from these or your remedy. The soft bits at the bottom concern me more. When you pulled off the dead bits what colour was the surface that you dusted with sulfur? Was it a healthy green colour or were there still brown bits? If there were still brown [rotten] bits the rot could spread back into the main plant.
Indoors will be fine. Unheated rooms are usually not as cold as they feel!

[scousetigger]

They were green. I took them back to solid growth and dried thoroughly with kitchen towel and then dusted with sulpher.

[Susanne]

Hello

Sounds like an interesting potion.Just a few questions:
How do you prepare Nicotine solution and what exactly is Meths?
Thanks

Susanne

[Chris43]

Not sure if this is the right way, but when I used to be a smoker, I saved my ciggy butts and just soaked them until the liquid was as dark as I could get, and then used this to spray. I didn't have many cacti then, but did use it for roses.
Meths is methylated spirits, usually methyl acohol, dyed purple and with an additive to make it unpalatable, sold at hardware stores or chemists. It's a while since I bought any - prefer single malt now

[Phil_SK]

There was a discussion on another cactus forum about how safe the use of soaked cigarettes/nicotine is. I felt that the stuff is more dangerous than I'd like to handle - it was banned for good reason. Commercially available insecticides might require you to spend a bit more money but it's probably worth it, especially if you buy a systemic one like Provado.
Incidentally, meths is mostly ethanol (ethyl alcohol), traditionally with a bit of methanol (methyl alcohol) as the undrinkable component. I think they've come up with less toxic/more unpalatable things to put in it, so 'methylated' is a bit of a misnomer. Not that any of that matters, it's still the purple stuff!

[scousetigger]

I will get some Provado in the new year. I just used what I had to hand in an emergency.......at least I thought it was at the time.

[iann]

Did you check the roots?

[Chris43]

It was certainly me, Nick, who tried the Neem oil. I guess it is difficult to say for sure, as I had been pretty sure of no mealies or red spider beforehand owing to good use of Provado and Bug Clear previously.
But I can report no obvious signs so far. Just one thing, a few of my plants looked a bit over glossy, which means that I probably didn't mix the oil as thoroughly as I should on that last spray. But the next seemed to sort it out and the plants are growing fine, so no problem.