Greenhouse: Can we tour your greenhouse?, 1 by gothqueen

gothqueen wrote:
I had a big battle with pests when I had all the foliage from the closely packed heliconias in there. Mealies, scale and mites. But getting rid of all that foliage pretty much cleared the problem. I get an occasional infestation now, mainly on stuff like plumeria and I have to pay attention to the Cattleya alliance orchids, they are pest magnets for some reason. I do a couple of Neem Oil sprays at the beginning of the season, in sequence, and I treat the large trees (bauhinias, plumerias, and some of the palms) with a drenching of the Bayer Systemic in Spring so it can come out in the new growth. Otherwise, I just keep a watch out to catch anything as soon as it starts and Neem it out of existance. I try not to use pesticides like Orthene, Cygon etc anymore, as I have a breeding colony of green treefrogs in the greenhouse that hatch babies out in the tanks of my bromeliads, and I also have a few snakes that live in there and many 'stream frogs' and toads. I don;t want to harm them. They do keep some pests in check, but for the frogs, it has to move or they don;t eat it, so they don't help with scale and mealies. The fish in the ponds and streams eat mosquito larva in the water and I have dragon and damselflies as well.

I also keep a bottle of Ivory dish soap in th GH and mix up a soap spray for spot-use at any time.

Running the overhead sprinklers nightly also helps a lot to keeping pests down, and keeps my predators happy.

Here's an orchid in bloom at the moment, peeking out between a palm frond