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01:03:2003 Entry: "Stan : Succulents and mites / Cacti and scales"

Succulents and mites / Cacti and scales

Succulent mites:

We found little green mites, or at least they looked like mites, on our Euphorbia meloformis. We put systemic insecticide in the soil and waited a about four weeks, but the little insects were still inhabiting the plant. Fearing that they might eventually attack some of our other succulents we decided to spray our Euphorbia meloformis with insecticide. In the past we've been able to save fern from infestations with Ortho Rose spray, and our thinking is that if a fern can survive the insecticide application nearly everything else can too. Knowing that there was the possibility that the insecticide might kill our Euphorbia meloformis we took the chance and waited. The little green mites were gone in less than a day, and fortunately our Euphorbia meloformis is doing very well after two weeks. As an additional measure of protection we put systemic insecticide in the soil of most of our other succulents.

Cactus scales:

We've had problems with scales on some of our house plants before, but scales on some of our cacti took us by surprise. I was looking at a Parodia cactus we had just bought one evening and there were little brown spots looked suspicious. I took a sewing needle and picked at one of the spots, and when it came off I knew it was clearly a scale. After checking all of our cacti we found about a dozen plants with scales. Most of our plants we were able to pick off the scales, kill them in alcohol, and clean the cactus with alcohol too. Our grafted Rebutia canigueralii though, has very fragile skin and we decided it would be better to spray it with insecticide then try to physically remove the scales. Also one of our Espostoa cacti was so badly infested that picking off the insects one at a time seemed impossible, so we sprayed it too. Again we used the Ortho rose spray, because we've had good luck with all of our house plants, including ferns, surviving the treatment. Fortunately now all of our cacti seems to be recovering from the scales very well.

In the beginning I was wondering if we had a house plant that had been the (mother ship) source for all of these scales. I went through every plant we have, and examined all of them very carefully for insects. I ended up finding about a dozen plants, mostly crotons, with web building mites, but none with scales. Of course we inoculated the house plants with mites, and hopefully all of them will survive this infestation. As far as our cacti go it is clear that a few of them came from the green houses with scales. There isn't just one mother ship cactus or one green house source to blame, but these scales were beginning to spread before we realized that we had a problem. When we bought our grafted Rebutia canigueralii I had carefully inspected it, because I wanted to make sure the central body was in good health. If it had any signs of health problems I should have pulled off all of it's babes (it's tillers) to root them as new plants. Grafted cacti usually don't live too long anyway. So, when I noticed that it had scales I knew that the grafted Rebutia canigueralii had to have acquired the infestation in our house. From now on I'll carefully check every cactus we buy for infestations and kill the insects as soon as possible, so they don't have a chance to spread.

I felt so bad for all of my infested cacti and spent several evenings picking off scales. I'm very happy that the ones that I chose to spray with insecticide are doing well too. Oddly enough a few days ago we bought a cactus, that we haven't identified yet, that has mealy bugs. Looking at this cactus in the store I thought it was only cactus wool, but checking it again at home that fuzzy stuff was definitely a mealy infestation. I haven't had mealy bugs on any plants for years. Needless to say all of these new visitors have been killed and hopefully non of them managed to reproduce and infest something else in the few hours they had in our house before we figured out that they were an infestation. It is hard to believe how often pests can come home from a green house on a cactus.

By Stan @ 18:32 PM CST:01:03:03 ..::Link::..