
How to Identify and Get Rid of Whiteflies on Plants
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Castile soap is the soap to use - it is vegetable-based, chemical-free, with no synthetic ingredients or animal fat. Originally made from pure olive oil in Castile, 12th century Spain. Today, it may contain other plant-based oils such as almond, avocado, coconut, hemp, walnut. It worked for us in a commercial greenhouse in Australia. In a big area like that, the white flies do come back, so it needs to be repeated.
Hi, I am having the most difficult problem with a horrible infestation of white flies on my crepe myrtles. They are to large for me to reach from the mid to the top of the trees. There are two of them. I have applied neem oil and the organic soap I bought online. I've tried dawn mixed with water and even granules from a pest control company. I'm so frustrated I want to cut the trees below the leaves but I really love them. I'm not sure what to do! We've had hummingbirds and tons of dragonflies also but nothing is helping. Please help! Thank you!
In addition to the great remedies you suggested, neem oil is very effective for controlling white flies and causes minimal harm to beneficial insects. One word of caution; dish soap can be too harsh and can damage plants. It is better to use an insecticidal soap that is formulated specifically for the purpose of controlling insects.
Here in Britain we get a very small red spider that scurries about in the garden in the sun. It's only about 1mm in size. I would expect you have them in America. If you carefully collect a couple and put them on your plant they'll take out the larva stage. (Don't confuse them with red spider mite which are bigger and not properly red. The spider will eat those too though)
I've used a Butter Yellow coloured LED, inside a Maconara jar covered with Neem Oil with excellent success!
Of course, this requires you to go out 3 times a night to shake the plants, but once you do the whitefly can't see anything except its favourite colour, Yellow and flies into it.
Two nights in a row I've had to recover the jar with neem oil after being coated with whitefly. Washed them all down the drain using dishwashing liquid, then recoated the jar!
For the first few nights, I also sprayed with Neem oil and a spray unit with an upturned spray head to get from top to bottom of the plants under side each leaf.
At last, I feel like it's improving and not getting worse. There was a time where visitor disturbing the Tom plants would be covered in a snow of furry of whitefly.
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