White flies

[Northernfox]

Probably going to leave it out of my garden lol

[imafan26]

I found one of the hibiscus plants infested with white flies. I cut the hibiscus and bagged the leaves. I have been checking my peppers and so far they look ok, so for now I think I am ahead of them. I have corn tasseling now and that will help because corn has always attracted the purple lady bugs that eat a lot of white flies.

I found a few whiteflies on eggplant in the green house, so I hosed them off. It will be much harder to contain them there.

White flies are a problem every two years. It has to do with the predator prey cycle. The purple ladybugs are the main controllers of the whiteflies and when their populations are down the white flies goes up.
I haven't had much luck controlling white flies chemically in the past, and its really been working out for me not to use anything. So, my approach this year will be to monitor, encourage the ladybugs to move in, keep the plants as healthy as I can, cut my losses and cut any plants that are really infested.

Unfortunately, if I resort to spraying, I will have what I have in the front yard, pests I always have to keep spraying to control. My front yard has ornamentals, gardenia and roses. It is very hard to control pests on gardenia and roses without resorting to chemicals.

That being said, since I am having so much better results not using pesticides, I am trying to bring back the beneficials to the front yard by planting companion plants. I have nectar plants but the beneficial insects avoid them because they have been treated with systemics. I have switched from the one year imodiclopid to the six week systemic rose control, which I only resorted to when I had no choice. I have not used that in about a month. I am hoping to go pesticide free shortly but it may mean that I will have to replace some plants that are very heavily infested but also some very old roses. I also have a nice hibiscus but I will either have to tolerate the erineum gall mites disfiguring all of the leaves and hoping the plant survives that until the gall mites are done for the summer, or I will need to remove the plant.

[lily51]

White flies are attracted to bright yellow. You can buy yellow sticky traps and holders from many garden supply catalogs. A few showed up one winter when I decided to let a tomato plant get as large as possible in my greenhouse. I made my own yellow traps with bright yellow poster board and coating the card-sized traps with a thin layer of vasoline, but you can use an oil that lasts and would hold flies to surface.

Now I let my greenhouse rest until it's time for plants in the spring.

[Northernfox]

I suffered through and as soon as my plants were outside they did much better. I will have to show you the havoc they did on my hot peppers. Although it was only certain varieties that did poorly.

Ill post a little video later

[gater]

I have this issue as well but my plants are outdoors.
I have noticed small white specs on my cayenne peppers and upon cutting open the pepper, have found a small larvae eating the pepper from the inside.
Any thoughts?

[Northernfox]

I am not sure. My white flies did not eat the fruit just the leafs. The predators outside made short work of them and I have not seen any since.

Are your plants inside or out ?

[imafan26]

Yeah peppers, hibiscus and poinsettias are white fly magnets. I have cut back the hibiscus because I know it will grow back. I have also been hosing off the undersides of the pepper and basil leaves every time I water and that seems to be holding them at bay. The corn has a few purple lady bugs happily eating the white flies and I have found white flies on the weeds. I'm letting the white flies have the weeds. Better there than on my peppers. I am pulling and bagging the weeds as I go, it has been raining a lot for summer and the weeds have been going gangbusters. In fact it is raining now and there is a flash flood warning for the Windward side of the island. Unfortunately it means the grass will need weed whacking again soon. The good thing about strong rain is that it does knock a lot of the white flies off the plants.

[gater]

My plants were all outdoors in pots.

[Cola82]

My plants are all outside and I've been seeing a lot of white flies, too, but I think it's because they're under a covered patio. We get wind, but not probably not enough. If your plants are in a place without a lot of air moving through, that could be why they're so attracted to it.

I just spend a little time going through all my plants crushing the flies and wiping their eggs off the leaves and it seems to keep their numbers down. I haven't seen any juveniles. I feel a little bad, though, because the flies themselves are actually really cute.

[Northernfox]

I was forced to treat mine with DR.Doom. It was not ideal but that stuff worked well. Three treatments and bam gone.