Whitefly - a pest of garden plants, can affect both adult specimens and young seedlings. This harmful little butterfly eats their juice. Outwardly, the insect looks like a white moth, but much smaller. An adult individual is only 2 mm in length, loves to settle in greenhouses (it is not without reason that it is called the greenhouse whitefly), but can live on indoor plants. This tiny butterfly is outwardly difficult to notice; it lives on the underside of the leaf. But it’s worth touching the plant, as the insects immediately fly away,
it looks like a dusty cloud.
Signs of plant damage
We will deal in order how to deal with whiteflies. To understand this, you need to know how the affected plant looks. As mentioned above, if you touch the leaf slightly, a cloud of a large number of very small butterflies appears around it. On the damaged leaves, a sticky substance forms on the underside, in the environment of which fungal diseases develop very quickly. The surface of the leaves first turns white, and then turns black. Thus, whitefly does double harm - it sucks the sap from the plant and contributes to its defeat by fungal diseases. A plant is doomed to die if urgent measures are not taken.
Control measures
How to deal with a whitefly butterfly if it has already started on an adult plant? The most reliable method of dealing with it is the treatment with insecticides. There are a lot of drugs sold in stores, you can choose any
them: "Fosbezid", "Fufafon", "Mospilan", "Pegasus", "Actellik", "Verticillin-J" or any other. About how to deal with whiteflies, the instructions for these drugs are described in detail. Strictly adhere to the indicated doses for processing and do not exceed them. But you can use these chemicals only before the flowering of plants or, in extreme cases, during it. If the fruits have already started, it is better not to use chemistry, but to resort to the proven "grandmother" methods. Popular wisdom knows how to deal with whiteflies. Gardeners often use glue traps. You can use the usual ribbons for flies, but you can make them yourself. To do this, take small plywood, paint them in a bright color (this attracts a pest) and lubricate it with some sticky substance, such as honey or castor oil. Such home-made traps need to be washed and smeared again after a few days. How to deal with whiteflies at home, if the pest wound up on flowers, folk wisdom will also tell. For indoor flowers, safer means are used: soapy solution (dilute
laundry soap in water in a ratio of 1: 6), yarrow infusion (80 g of herb per 1 liter of hot boiling water, leave for a day) or garlic infusion (1 tbsp. Peeled and chopped pour garlic with 1 liter of hot boiling water, leave for a day). These infusions and solutions are wiped or sprayed on the leaves of plants. If whitefly appeared on seedlings, how to fight? Here, both insecticides and infusions prepared on their own are suitable.
Where does the pest come from?
Very often, we ourselves bring a whitefly into our house or greenhouse along with the purchased soil for seedlings. In order to prevent this harmful butterfly from appearing in your greenhouse or greenhouse next year, in areas where winters are cold, nothing needs to be done, all the larvae will freeze over the winter. And if the winters are not cold, regularly change the soil and monitor its quality.