Bah Humbugs!

Aphids on one of my tropical hibiscus wintering over inside. (Photo by Charlotte Ekker Wiggins)

Bah Humbugs!

It’s a beautiful sunny day in the 60s in mid-Missouri, a strange warm day considering Christmas is only a couple of days away. With windows open, it was also a perfect day to check my inside plants to find the unwelcome hitchhikers on some of my tropical plants.

Even though I clean them off before bringing inside, it only takes one little group of aphids, mealybugs and scale insects to take hold and start to spread in a closed up home environment.

Scale looks like brown or black ovals along the stem of a plant. They start out as clear or beige disks that get darker as their skeleton hardens.

Black or brown scale sapping a poinsettia stem. (Photo by Charlotte Ekker Wiggins)

You can see the beginning of scale under the black one on the poinsettia stem. I tend to remove them by hand with a q-tip dipped in alcohol.

The aphids look like small white dots.

The mealy bugs look like fluffy white cotton ovals and are often found at the base of a plant and under leaves.

These are mealy bugs on one of my moth orchids. (Photo by Charlotte Ekker Wiggins)

Luckily there is a simple solution and one we can all make at home:

My homemade bug spray recipe in a spray bottle. (Photo by Charlotte Ekker Wiggins)

Homemade Bug Spray Recipe

1/4 cup water

1/4 cup 70% alcohol

1 tablespoon Dawn liquid detergent

Shake well in a spray bottle. Apply to the bugs on the plants.

All set to take out those unwelcome bugs! (Photo by Charlotte Ekker Wiggins)

Check and spray the back of leaves as well. (Photo by Charlotte Ekker Wiggins)

If these plants were outside, the bugs would become food for something else. Ladybugs love aphids and will consume scale insects as well. I don’t have any in my house overwintering and ah, don’t plan to invite any although. Yes, it did cross my mind.

What i like about this homemade spray is that it naturally cleans the bugs off the plants as well as eliminates them.

When the plants return outside, the first spring rain helps give them a good start without these bugs having sapped their strength through winter.

Charlotte