whiteflies

I haven't heard much about the parasites that kill the whiteflies lately, but I can vouch that they work tremendously well.

My dad got the whitefly parasites from Armstrong nursery a couple of years ago. At that time our hibiscus, and citrus was just covered and a tree of the neighbors looked on the verge of death.

It seemed to take about a year for the parasites to take hold but now are hibiscus are beautiful -- and the neighbors tree looks great too!

Are you referring to encarsia formosa? I've seen them on Gardensalive.com but have never used them. I'm partial to green lacewings and lady bugs myself! We plant sages and other plants for them to nest in because they supposedly don't like to live in the the trees, but I think one of our navel orange trees is \"home\" to a bunch (a gaggle? a troop? a pod? a litter?)of lacewings. I am not about to evict them.

We eliminated our whiteflies by spraying plain water through a high power nozzle on the nests late in the afternoon, then introducing lady bugs.

A good solution if you are not growing Fuschias.

What is it about Fuschias?

A high-pressure water blast will tear apart most fuchsia varieties -- esp. the smaller size Aretitos and its kin.

A water blast is good for citrus when not in bloom or with newly set fruit. Since citrus are prone to various fungi, I either blast with my hose-end spray filled with a low dose environmentally friendly fungicide or immediately after in a separate spraying. If you want to get rid of pesky insects too, then blast with water and then spray with something like Green Light Fruit Tree Spray which is as friendly as you can get while still being effective.

Unfortunately, this is not a solution for citrus leaf miner -- which many of you are suffering from right now. To kill the eggs which later hatch and cause the damage, try spraying with Spinosaid every six weeks starting in April -- staggered 3 weeks from any other spraying, like the Fruit Tree Spray above.<br><br>Post edited by: Richard Frost, at: 2007/09/14 21:28