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Pest control inside greenhouse - Advice needed

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Ladybugs are perfect against mealybugs. My venus-flytrap is too lazy to catch its own food ;-)

I had thrips in my small greenhouse, now I don't see any of them because I put two predators in it:

Thripex- predator mites against the thrips- egs and larvae

and Chryson- lacewing larvae against adult thrips

so this small army works very well.

Mycorrhiza also grow very well in a greenhouse environment. Yesterday I gave Symbivit to all of my pots except the saltbush, manuka, epazote, vaccinium oxycoccos, lepidium peruvianum and cyperus sp.

Edited by mindperformer

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So the war isnt over yet !

Ok ok… sorry for the delayed response. Things have been busy..but here is the update;

I took lots of advice from this thread plus a few discussions off line and I have listed below what steps I took.

  1. I cleaned out greenhouse. Included removing damp pine timber/brick plant stands and replacing with milk crates and bread crates. Timber was holding dampness.
  2. The floor is concrete slab with 2 inches of rocks. I noticed the sediment from rocks settles at bottom of rocks leaving a damp muddy sediment after a lot of water. So I mixed in some diatomite into the rocks on floor. Helping soak up moisture.
  3. Removed plants. Hosed down removing an visual creepy fellas
  4. I used “Tomato Dust” (mix of sulphur and copper)
  5. I covered leaves of caapi and viridis plus all cacti and lophs. I left for a few days then took them out of greenhouse again and hosed down.

tomato dust - yates
Active Ingredients

400g/kg SULFUR (S) present as elemental sulfur
40g/kg COPPER © present as copper oxychloride
0.5g/kg SPINOSAD

How It Works

Sulfur and Copper Oxychloride act as protectant fungicides. Sulfur is also a miticide. Spinosad, an insecticide derived from natural soil bacteria, controls tomato grubs and potato moth (tomato leaf miner).

I then monitored for a few days. I noticed the ants were straight back running all over the caapi and psychotira. But little bugs/mites were gone.

A few days days little bugs are back in small numbers.I then decided to spray with some organic “yates insect and mite killer”

Was out in greenhouse yesterday arvo and I noticed the little fellas are back in force again.Even more than before ! ! little bastards….i don’t know …but it seems that the ants could be farming them under the leaves. I have attached a few pics.

They seem to be focusing on the caapi leafs…I hit them again with the yates insect & mite killer

I am curious to know exactly what these guys are and how I should get rid of them

They seem to be focused on the caapi leaves…Havent seen many on the psychotria and none on the cactus grafts and lophs.

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Edited by trichoshaman

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def not mites

hard to tell 100% from the pic but i'm pretty sure you have aphids/mealies

the ants are farming them.

try ant bait-boric acid(not toxic)

Edited by dg420

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Mother f#*kers!

Dam ants. Smart fellas hey...

Are aphids /mealies dangerous to plant health?

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Aphids and Mealies are not good for your plants. Pyrethium should sort them out.

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Aphids and Mealies are not good for your plants. Pyrethium should sort them out.

thanks Stillman .

When I asked the lady (apparent expert) at my local "flower power" store for Pyrethium she told me "yates insect & mite killer" would do a far better job than Pyrethium.

I guess she was wrong !

okie I will go back and get it,

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the yates-killer is essentially potassium soap, also in Neudosan and many other organic pesticides. It is less toxic than pyrethrum.

one week after the spray you can search for lady beetles and put them on the plants, tey love to feed on aphids.

Edited by mindperformer

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You should check out the current thread on caapi and ants too :)

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Hey yea thnx guys

The pyrethrum did the trick.

No sign of life.

Yes been checking the other thread on caapi and ants.

Great stuff. Recently bought blue ray dvd ".kingdom of plants"

David attenborough...great stuff in there on insect n plant symbiosis.

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Just wanna add from previous experience that fungus gnats are one to look out for in greenhouse environments when humidity gets high. Those things sure can breed quickly, which also leads to developing immunity to pesticides really quickly... females lay hundreds of eggs which hatch in under a week, and selection has favored higher populations of the female sex so lots of breeding. They destroy seedlings and leafy cuttings and carry fungal spores as well.

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Mites are bad news and hard to eradicate completely - they return unless you keep up with the spraying . They were devastating for my young psychotrias , however , I tried Confidor spray which fucked them for a while , but they returned . Mites appear to become resistant to some less toxic sprays , and I was told to alternate with different sprays . Eventually I tried some Confidor tablets that you put in the soil [ sistemic ] that I found in Woolies . These work great , and no sign of any bugs the past two months . Only problem with these is they last so long , and have a long withholding period , but they are saving my small plants and I will stick with them until the plants are bigger , and better able to handle bugs . But I would not consume any produce until the bugs are back . I am more concerned for the health of the plants at present , rather than harvesting them atm , so the tabs suit my needs well because I am slack with regular spraying ... .. btw , it is okay to spray lophs with pyrethrin , but trichs are sensitive to it and can burn . I have a cacti book that advises to spray trichs shortly after with fresh water if spraying them with pyrethrin , but it won't hurt them in the soil . Apparently mites do not become resistant to pyrethrin , but you have to keep it up on a regular basis - some always survive , and they bust out again before long ..

Edited by Heretic

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the Thripex- predator mites now erased all thrips and soil mites in my greenhouse :innocent_n:

once apon a time nematodes were highly effective against fungus gnats

Edited by mindperformer

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nice! sprays are cool and all, but what if you took pyrethrum, gave it skin, legs and a mouth...you would have biological control. plus their shit is less toxic than anything in a bottle.

One reason i am personally so against chemi bug killers is that i see long time farmers here and how fucked up their bodies are from a lifetime of spraying. really nasty shit.

I have not yet tried pred mites. tried lacewings and ladybugs, but work well but i find lacewings to be far better, but ladybug larva get a big bigger so maybe can take down bigger stuff.

I still have yet to see a lacewing/ladybug larva fuck with an ant though, even if it is smaller.

  • Like 1

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I have a dirty great big, fat canetoad lurking around the bottom of my greenhouse, and a couple of green tree frogs up high.

They gotta be feeding on something. :)

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I find it effective to mix one tablespoon of Clorox bleach or whatever bleach

Into a gallon of water, put this in a spray mister...then thoroughly spray all sides of plant and soil.

Then, I wait a bit and take a large pump sprayer...and 'pressure wash' off everything

..both sides of leaves.

This destroys countless future generations of mites and removes eggs, etc.

I get rid of the water away from my plants.

Then I use Azamax, drench the soil and or spray.

This combination is much much better than azamax alone.

You might be ok with just bleach and water plus pressure wash every week.

Even with the most toxic pesticides, mites often build up a resistance.

Then you are stuck spraying super toxic stuff every three days or so,

Or switching between toxic pesticides.

They can be expensive, too!

Best wishes!...good luck!

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buy a sulfur flume it heats sulfur up and it goes into the atmosphere . Also try using pest oil or neem oil

plus you could also buy some lady bugs. I have used flea bombs before just seal your green house up

and lob a couple of them in there .

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^ his azamax is neem extract.

i've had good luck w/just neem extract in the past

no bleach needed imo

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