I went to a nursery to identify what was going on with my plant...I thought my kids might have been spitting on it. HAHA! They told me it was spittlebugs and to pull them off and squish them. I spent an hour squishing bugs yesterday and guess what? They are back today!
Does anyone know how to get rid of them?
I just hose them off whenever I see them, they'll come back but if you're out there every few days and give them a good squirt then you can keep them under control. Definitely easier and less gross than squishing them! They also disappear on their own in a few months, so unless you have tons and tons of them all over your plants you can probably just leave them alone, I've never seen them do noticeable damage to anything.
My plant is usually a couple feet taller by now, I think they stunted it's growth. I tried shooting them off with the hose today and they were back within an hour, I think i have a little more than average...
It's weird how there are so many on one plant and nowhere else in the garden.
I sprayed the plant really good with safer soap although the spittle bug is not listed on the label.
Hopefully this will work!
Hi Tracy, the reason nothing works to rid this bug is because soap, pesticidrs etc dont penetrate the spit that is around the bug, the advice to use the garden hose is the best, however, the most succesful way is as already mentioned, to squash them with your fingers, if the hose jets are not strong enough, they will just climb back up the plant that they like best, they dont usualy survive for long outwith the spit, as far as I know, when the mother lays her eggs, she is the one who makes the spit to keep the wee bugs safe after hatching, and protected from people like us, HA, HA, HA, and anything else that eats them, they dont do a lot of harm to the plants unless you have a vast amount of them, sometimes the smaller birds in my garden do the job for me,
so happy bug hunting and good luck.
WeeNel.
Thanks WeeNel
Back to squishing!
Eggs?
Good grief.
Buy your kids some vinyl gloves and put them to work squishing!
