Mealy bug on Citrus

I have a Citrus. It has got Mealy bug. I have given it a shower and sprayed it with soap solution. Is there anything else I need to do?

you can also spray it with alcohol.
you'll need to keep a very close watch over it... mealy tricky little pests.
what ever did not come off with the shower, and or spray treatments, take a q-tip, soaked in alcohol and swab off any remaining mealy you see. check the container the plant is in, and make sure you don't have any stray pests lingering there. give it all a spritz of alcohol and keep watch over it.

Stay with the treatments recommended by stogeo. One time won't do it. Check plant over every few days. Mealy bugs seem to be smart enough to stay hidden in leaf axils and creases in the plant. It's difficult to eradicate them, but with patience, it is doable. Fortunately citrus leaves are pretty durable and hold up well to mealy bug damage. Also, the leaves hold up well to the alcohol treatment. Some plants are damaged as much by the treatment as the bug itself. If the infestation is too bad to control by hand, I have had success spraying the plant with something made to kill mealybug and enclosing the entire plant in a large trash bad. Seal it, keep it out of direct sun, and in 2-3 days remove the plant and shower it off again. Good luck.....

Hello,

Thank you very much for your advice. I will be away from this forum for 2 weeks. Have a nice Christmas everyone

If the tree is fairly small, you can take a q-tip dipped in rubbing alcohol and rub the mealies off with that, that's especially good if you knock off most of them using one of the other techniques but there are always a few left behind, then you can use the q-tip and alcohol to get rid of those without having to soak the whole plant in something again.

Hello,

Where I live the supply of insecticides(if thats what its called) is very poor. I have looked at it and it still has mealy bugs. Do they get in the soil? I made sure I got rid of all those little pests.

You need something that has the product Imidacloprid in it. Sometimes it is a liquid mixed with water and then water the plant with it or sometimes it comes in granules to mix in the soil.

Imidacloprid works both in the soil and on the plant systemically. Good luck............

I would guess if there's trouble finding basic insecticides in Bulgaria, that one probably won't be there. What you could try is use the alcohol and q-tips to get rid of any that are on the plant now, then repot it in some clean soil. Shake off as much of the existing soil as you can, rinse the roots off really well, then get it some clean soil and be vigilant--you may still miss a few that way, but if you stay on top of things you'll get rid of them, it might just take a little while.

I agree with all, it could even take a few months, but these bugs dont eat away the foliage quite as fast as other bugs can, so just keep removing them as and when you see them, I have even resorted to picking them off with tweezers and squashing them to death, if you cant find spirits in the stores, you could go to chemist/pharmacist and ask for cleaning alcohol, the stuff used for sterilising doctors hands, gadgets etc, we call it Methylated spirit and I use it to clean mirrors etc, it really stinks of alcohol and swab the foliage with a ball of cotton wool, kind used for wound cleaning, dip the wool into the spirit and hold each leaf in one hand and the wet wool in the other and swab top and underside of each leaf, the bugs are inside a protected little sack that spraying cant penetrate, so spraying alone wont help, it is a long processes, but you get there in the end, it takes time and sometimes loads of swabbing before you get rid of the bugs, but dont do it daily or you will also weaken the foliage, say once each week should do it, also cover the soil with paper to stop any bugs falling onto the soil as you work. best wishes. WeeNel.

Thanks for that bit of information, WeeNel!
gail

Hello!

My citrus is now fine! It is even blooming! Thank you for the help!:)