Before you buy a lily for your site, consider each of its bulbs. After all, seduced by the label, you can buy an unhealthy plant. The lily bulb must be resilient and sufficiently firm. It should not have mold. The roots of a healthy specimen are at least five centimeters in length. But, in addition to plant diseases, novice lovers also have lily pests. They will be discussed in this article, as well as how and how to fight them. Lily pests in their numbers exceed a dozen species. These include greenhouse and lily louse aphids, thrips, bulbous rattle, fly-bug, leaf beetle and other harmful insects.
Lily Pests: Red Beetle
The most dangerous and widespread enemy of the lily is visible on the plant with the naked eye. Going to the flower, you can easily notice how he sits on the leaves and eats them.
It is called the first when ailments of lilies (pests) are listed. Red lily bug, it is also a bulbous rattle or squeak beetle. Sometimes people call him a “fireman” - the red color is to blame. But he got the nickname “rattle” due to the fact that if pressed, the insect is able to make characteristic sounds. Of particular danger are the gluttonous larvae of this beetle. They have a pink color, and the surface of the body is covered with lumps of mucus of a greenish-brown hue. Such pests of lilies (red beetle and its larvae) eat leaves almost completely.
If enemies were discovered, the question arises - how to treat lilies from pests? As soon as larvae have been found on the leaves, the flowers should be sprayed with an insecticide.
Onion leaf beetle
What other pests can attack lilies? The red lily-beetle in this regard passes the baton to the onion leaf beetle. This specimen is known for nibbling leaves at the edges, or creating holes in them that have an oval shape. And its larvae completely leave one “skeleton" from the leaves. The adult beetle has an orange color and an oval shape of the body. His abdomen is black and his legs are red. The larvae are covered with mucus, which has a blackish tint. These lily pests overwinter in the soil, come to the surface at the end of April and lay eggs. Hatched larvae live for about twenty days, and then pupation occurs. In general, one generation is formed.
Pests of lilies and the fight against them, although similar, but have certain differences. In this case, in addition to treating plants with insecticides, it is necessary to regularly destroy weeds and collect beetles manually.
Aphid
This pest is very small and forms entire colonies on the leaves. It greatly weakens the plant, and also carries a large number of infections of viral origin.
In order for a beautiful and healthy lily to grow and flourish on your site, pests (beetle, aphids and others) must be mercilessly destroyed. In particular, aphids can be defeated with the help of Karbofos, Fitoverm and other insecticides.
Onion root tick
This pest damages a lot of bulb plants. Its length is not even one millimeter. The tick feeds on the scales of the bulb, resulting in the decay of the latter.
A lily affected by a tick stops its growth. Its leaves turn yellow and gradually fade. A weakened plant is exposed to various other diseases and eventually dies. The spread of the tick occurs through the soil together with the material for planting or through a tool for tillage.
Before treating lilies from pests, it is necessary to establish which of them affected the plant. When examining bulbs affected by a tick, you can find many strokes and cavities in which a brown powder is located. Such bulbs should be removed after digging. All plant debris is collected carefully and destroyed. If the presence of this pest is suspected in the planting material, then all the bulbs must be held in the Karbofos solution for fifteen minutes or sprinkled with chalk. Chalk adhering to the body of ticks causes them to die from drying out. If the pest was detected during the growing season, then lilies should be sprayed with a solution of horn, but it is better to destroy all diseased specimens. If your site has been infected, then you cannot grow bulbous plants on it for four years.
Lily pests. Flies
Great damage to the bulbs is caused by the larvae of female flies, which got their name for their ability to freeze in flight, while making a characteristic sound. In the bulbs, they eat the moves up and down. From May to June, these lily pests lay their eggs in the soil. It is here that gluttonous larvae appear that wait for winter in the bulbs of plants. As a result of this “settlement”, a weakened lily grows in the spring. The leaves of such a flower are ugly and have a yellow color.
The fight against them is digging the soil in the fall. And you need to do this quite deeply, wrapping the formation. You can prevent egg laying by mulching the ground with peat or dusting with Bazudin. Also, garlic will come to the rescue, which should simply be planted around the perimeter of the bed.
Medvedka
We have already considered many pests of lilies and the fight against them. But in this list you can not get around the ordinary bear. This insect is large in size, has a brown color.
Medvedka equips nests in the soil at a depth of about 10 cm. To better ventilate, this pest destroys all plants around, gnawing the underground part of the stem. In the area where the bear lives, you can find a huge number of holes in the soil. They are especially clearly visible after rain.
There are several ways to deal with this insect. The first is the destruction of nests. They simply dig them out, and the larvae and eggs are thrown upstairs, where they die. To surely destroy all the nests, you need to dig the site deep enough.
Another method is to set traps. In spring, sheets of slate or plywood are laid out on the beds. Under them, the bear climbs to warm up. It remains only to check the traps with a certain frequency and destroy the pest. And another way is to create manure pits in the fall. Depths of half a meter are filled with manure, in which the bear settles in for wintering. As soon as the cold sets in, the pits are cleaned and the contents distributed over the area. As a result, insects die.
Nematodes
These are small round worms. They live in the ground, and the development of individuals occurs inside the plant.
Due to their vital activity, growths and tumors form on leaves and stems. You can suspect the presence of this parasite by seeing cracks in the trunk or deformed flowers. In addition, nematodes are capable of transmitting various viral diseases.
The fight against these worms is to disinfect the soil, as well as to exterminate the affected plants.
Potato scoop
Lily pests such as a scoop eat out plant trunks from the inside. As a result of such damage, the flower breaks or fades. The caterpillar has a reddish-purple color and a bright red line stretching along the back. The eggs of these caterpillars spend all winter time on wild cereals, and in the summer they move to flowers and other cultivated plants. Pupation occurs in the soil next to damaged plants at a depth of five to fifteen centimeters.
To prevent the invasion of scoops on lilies, you must carefully clean your area of weeds, as well as all sorts of plant debris. All this must be collected and destroyed.
Thrips
In some cases, small insects having an elongated shape parasitize on the root system of lilies. They are called thrips. Their mouth organs look like a proboscis.
These pests pierce the plant tissue and suck out the juice from it. The plant then weakens greatly, and its appearance loses its attractiveness. But the most dangerous is the transfer by thrips of various viral diseases. For a year, these parasites can form from three to eight generations. All this depends on the type of pest, as well as on the temperature and humidity of the environment. The number of generations becomes significantly less if the ambient temperature drops. This is primarily due to the increase in the duration of the life cycle.
You can fight these insects with any systemic insecticide . It can be, for example, Karbofos or Fitoverm. They begin to process plants with the advent of spring. Further processing is performed every ten or twelve days.
All pests of lilies, photos and descriptions of which are presented in this article, are the most common and common in garden plots. But this does not mean at all that our list has been exhausted. In addition to the considered insects, there are others that infect these plants less often, and also carry various diseases of viral and non-viral origin. But this is not a reason to despair and refuse such beautiful flowers on your site. The main thing is to study the available information and timely carry out preventive and therapeutic measures. Then your daylily will look wonderful and delight your eyes with bright and healthy colors.