Any flower grower is very careful about his plants and worries if something happened to them. It is very good if they rarely get sick, grow well and bloom magnificently. It’s nice to walk past such a home garden. But there is one misfortune that appears out of nowhere and spreads at the speed of lightning. This aphid is a small insect that can quickly destroy the entire flower garden. Therefore, it is important to know how to get rid of aphids at home.
How does infection happen?
In summer, when the windows to the garden are open, ants can bring it. So in winter your plants are completely safe? Yes, if the soil gathered in the fall was well calcined and treated with boiling water. In addition, if you buy or take plants from someone, it is very important to keep them in quarantine for several days. Better yet, immediately transplant into your soil and at the same time examine each leaf in detail. Then you do not have to think about how to get rid of aphids.
Be careful with gift bouquets. In them, insects often move to a new place of residence. But it is impossible to foresee everything. How to determine the presence of insects on your indoor plants and with what means to combat them?
What does aphid look like?
This is important to know for every grower. Only in this case will you be able to understand in time what is happening with the plant and take measures to treat it. Since getting rid of aphids can be difficult in advanced cases, it is important to start the fight as early as possible.
This is a group of sucking insects. Most pests are very small, up to 2 mm. But there are individual individuals that grow up to 7 mm. Their color is different: green, gray and even pink. All aphids are equipped with a proboscis, which they immerse in leaves and suck out carbohydrate-rich juice. Parasites multiply very rapidly. Three generations can grow in a month, and this is hundreds of thousands of insects.
If you do not know how to get rid of aphids, then you need to urgently learn. Having bred, pests suck out more and more juices from the plant, and allocates part of it in the form of sweet drops to the surface of the leaf. This becomes an excellent medium for the development of soot fungus, which looks like a dark spot on the leaves.
Symptoms of lesion
By what signs can you determine that aphids have settled on plants? It is not too difficult to consider it, because it conducts its activities on the surface of shoots and leaves.
- Inspect all plants regularly. If you thought that the leaves do not look exactly like before, you need to make sure that insects do not hide on their inner surface.
- If the colony has grown rapidly, then it is not difficult to see them. In this case, the lower surface of the leaves looks fluffy from insects.
- Aphid affects young shoots. By sucking juice from them, it contributes to their curvature, yellowing and drying.
- Shiny droplets are visible on the stems. These are aphid isolations.
- If aphids have chosen buds, then blooming flowers will be ugly.
That is, it is obvious how many problems domestic aphids can cause. How to get rid of it quickly and effectively, we will talk further.
First aid
An attentive flower grower knows the state of his plants well, and also regularly sprinkles them and wipes the leaves. Therefore, you can simply collect aphids by hand. A good way if you immediately noticed that aphids appeared on indoor flowers. And how to get rid of her once and for all? This is a more difficult task.
Many of you have come across the fact that in the evening they looked at each leaf, and in the morning a new insect sits on the bud, or even more than one. This is because the aphids managed to lay eggs, and now they hatch. To exterminate the entire population, it will be necessary to perform mechanical cleaning of the plant for quite some time every day.
Folk ways
These are simple and affordable tools that everyone usually has on hand. Over the past century, they have not changed at all. Feel free to ask how to get rid of aphids on indoor flowers from your mothers and grandmothers, and get comprehensive answers. We will give some of them:
- The use of soap. In fact, you can take any. But most often recommended household. It has a higher percentage of alkali and fewer fragrances. To prepare the solution, dilute 200 g of soap in 10 liters of water. With this solution, you need to process each branch of the plant. This is especially true for those places where aphids sit.
- Ash. It may be problematic to find her in a city apartment. But if you have friends in a private house, you can ask a little from them. To prepare the ash solution, it is required to sift 300 g of ash, pour two glasses of boiling water and boil for 30 minutes. Dilute the solution in 10 liters of water and use to treat the plants themselves, as well as the soil.
- Ash and soap solution. These two components complement each other well.
- Vinegar. This is both prevention and treatment. Constantly treat the plants with a solution of vinegar. A liter of water will require a tablespoon of vinegar.
These are proven insect control methods. If you are urgently looking for a way to get rid of aphids, then pay attention to them. Affordable, cheap, they will be reliable helpers.
Result Support
After you have saved the flower from adult insects, it is necessary to ensure that new individuals do not appear from the larvae. This is quite possible, because you already know how quickly aphids appear on home flowers. How to get rid of this scourge? For this, it is necessary for a long time to process plants with the following means:
- Iodine. To do this, mix 100 ml of milk and a bottle of iodine, and then dilute per liter of water.
- Baking soda. 10 liters will require 75 g of soda.
- Tincture of garlic. Take a liter of hot water and add 200 g of garlic cloves to it. Insist for at least a day.
- Onion peel. For 10 liters, you will need to take 200 g of husk. Insist 12 hours.
Usually, treatment with any drug for 2-3 weeks can completely rid your flower garden of voracious invaders. In any case, gardeners are advised to keep periodic processing up to a month.
Chemicals
The choice of drugs is usually due to the value of the plant. If ordinary chlorophytum is affected, then you can just wash it with soap. If it is not possible to save the whole plant, then you can well wash one outlet and grow a new one from it, changing the soil.
The situation is fundamentally different when insects attack an expensive decorative flower. In this case, comprehensive information is collected on how to get rid of aphids at home. And of course, from the whole abundance of funds you need to choose only the most reliable. One such drug is called Fitoverm. It is recommended to use it in the garden or in the greenhouse, but it copes well with its functions at home. The solution does not kill the insects immediately, but within 5 days. Aphids eat plant sap and die. Repeated spraying should be performed after 20 days.
"Actofit"
Another inexpensive but very reliable drug. It contains the same active substance as in the previous one - aversectin. The concentration is somewhat different, aphids die within 8 hours after eating. The tool works up to three weeks. After that, you can re-process. Usually this ends the need to combat aphids. The period is too long for new generations of pests to hatch.
Fufanon
This is a systemic insecticide . It helps not only from aphids, but also from other insect pests. This is a transparent emulsion that is sold in ampoules or vials. The active substance is absorbed into the stems and shoots. After the insect has eaten the juice of the plant, it makes breathing difficult. About a day later they die. Protective functions remain the same for another seven days. After that, you can repeat the processing. If your plant is not only decorative, but also fruit, it is recommended to wait 20 days before harvesting.
Instead of a conclusion
Now you know how to get rid of aphids on flowers. Of course, there are other ways to fight. For example, buy or take fragrant pelargonium from someone. Her very presence in the room allows aphids to be bred literally in a matter of days. If you don’t like its aroma, you can then give it back.
Aphids really do not like the aroma of citrus fruits, so feel free to lay in the pots the dried peels of oranges and grapefruits. It fights insects perfectly tobacco. You can grow it in a separate pot. An elegant plant, with interesting leaves and flowers, it will be an excellent solution in the fight against insects.
But if the defeat is very serious, then you can not do without chemicals. The listed drugs can be used at home. They guarantee quick disposal of aphids and reliable plant protection.