This only appeared since we've had a couple days rain. It's on my sunflowers, some salvia and my prairie coneflowers.
It appeared to be pretty locolized around the bird bath, but I found another sunflower over by the arbor that seems to have the start of this.
Already I cut the limbs off the salvia and coneflower and I yanked up every bit of sunflower that seems infested and all went into the fire pit.
What do you think?
Here's a close up of a couple lumps.
It looks like mealy bugs, you can take a cotton swab, dip it in alcohol and rub all over the bugs to kill them. You can also mix some alcohol and water and spray the plant. I wouldn't throw away the plants unless it's really bad.
The sunflowers I already did toss. They have the worse of the infestation.
At least now what's left is minimal and can be managed with a little alcohol and a swab.
Thanks for your help.
Molly
I just found these tonight, too. They were on my echinacea and columbine. I hosed them off. Will that work going forward if they don't increase in number?
Alcohol =Alcohol is mixed [ 1/ 2 cup to 1/ 2 teaspoon
of Volck oil ] spray twice - a week apart . Volck oil is used
as a sticking agent or [ 1/ 2 cup to 1/ 2 teaspoon of
Insecticidal soap ] soap is used as a sticking agent
plamolive soap and neem oil also works
Hosing them off didn't help at all. This a.m. they were back. I think even more. So I used alcohol. Thanks for the tip!
:)
just a tip here molly. florida, and probably a lot of other places, have scale that looks similar to this. it is a soft scale and it is a bear to get rid of. not all scale are the hard, waxy bumps. the white bumps i see on your picture, the ones with the yellowish spots, look like scale to me. you did right by getting rid of it. there is a particularly bad scale in florida at the present time that is inching it's way up and down the state and it will kill a plant without treatment. if you see this on any other plants, you may want to opt for the neem oil or even a plain light summer oil to smother the little beasts.
then again, it may just be mealybug and alcohol does work. debi
Thanks Debi, So far, I dug and burned all the ones that were infested. I did find a couple more later with a touch of the white on it and I treated those with the alcohol.
I need to keep a close watch and overcome this stuff before it infests everything.
Molly
I had these things on some of my roses and lilies, so I made up the alcohol mixture and sprayed it on them. The little fuzzy boogers can jump!! As soon as the spray hit them, lil fuzzy things started leaping off! YUK! Now I feel like I have them crawling all over me!
I think the alcohol mixture works - they sure don't seem to like it, that's for sure!
you must have leafhoppers or something else then because scale and mealies don't jump! glad you got rid of them though. lol
IW, yours sounds like white fly, they are attracted to yellow, so you can cut a strip of yellow paper and put double sided tape on it and they'll go to it. Or insecticidal soap, I've never tried the alcohol treatment on them.
