BCSS - Forum

Against our common enemy the mealybug I am currently experimenting adding diluted leftover coffee. At least it seems to slow down the development of these bugs. The cacti that I treated this way last winter stayed completely bug free but that may be a coincidence.

And I recently read that simply adding a bit of soap to water, whether it be diswasher soap or regular soap, and spraying also helps. I did not try that yet.

What is your opinion about this?

Regards, Cor

widea wrote:diswasher soap

Be careful how you translate this! Soap that goes in a dishwashing machine (usually a powder or tablet) is very alkaline and not suitable. What I think the Americans call dish soap, what I call washing-up liquid, is fairly OK, but it needs to be very dilute.

Knitting needles.

I posted a long reply but it seems to have been lost, so I'll keep it short: systemic insecticides are the way to go in my opinion & home remedies (while appealing) sometimes do more harm than good.

Susanne wrote:Knitting needles.

Please explain?

Just get a good systemic or at the very least a contact one. There's just no substitute in the end, unless your collection is limited to a windowsill. And if it's not available in any stores, then there's always the Internet. Always possible to get the good stuff from somewhere.

Alexander wrote:I posted a long reply but it seems to have been lost, so I'll keep it short: systemic insecticides are the way to go in my opinion & home remedies (while appealing) sometimes do more harm than good.

Virtually stopped using systemics as they seemed to have become resistant to them, so since last October I have been using SB Plant Invigorater, you have to spray weekly but it seems to be working. At the Society AGM the speaker from Kew gardens said that they use it in conjunction with natural predators.

Bill

Bill wrote:SB Plant Invigorater, you have to spray weekly but it seems to be working

It seems to be a detergent. According to the data sheet, it's main ingredient apart from water is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_laureth_sulfate . In my lengthy post I wrote that washing-up liquid worked for me but was a pain cause I had to repeat the application and wash the plants I used it on afterwards... A systemic insecticide worked first try for me, but obviously if the pests get resistant you need to do something else.

I believe so, not found any need to wash the plants after but yes you have to keep it up as unlike systemics there is no lasting affect. Even with several thousand plants It only takes 30 minutes to do the lot with a big sprayer.

So using washing-up liquid (no not dishwasher soap) and water helps but only temporary, the effect is only superficial and probably cannot reach all the places on the plant where a systemic obviously can, right?
Good I do not have thousands of plants...