Whiteflies transmit a lot of viral plant diseases and costs agriculture hundreds of millions of dollars around the world. All I want is to get rid of this pest from my own garden and stop the destruction of my vegetable garden.
Possible solutions that are organic and do not use any form of pesticide:
- Insecticidal soap purchased in a spray bottle.
- Dishwashing liquid solution - your own homemade version of insecticidal soap.
- Washing the plant with water.
- Yellow sticky traps (One idea was to cover yellow plastic cups with motor oil!!! Other ideas have been to use petroleum jelly as a sticky substance).
- Remove dead or damaged leaves that have infected by whitefles.
- Use a battery operated hand vacuum.
- Attract predators to your garden: Green lacewings, ladybirds, minute pirate bugs, big-eyed bugs, and damsel bugs, hummingbirds, wasps, lady bugs, spiders, and flies.
- Biopesticides based on microbials.
- Using companion planting - nasturtiums have been found to be helpful and zinnias, hummingbird bush, bee balm and pineapple sage attract predators of whiteflies too.
- Put in scented plants that conceal the scent of your plants and vegetables that are susceptible to whiteflies such as varieties of mints.
- Plant marigolds and nasturtiums.
- Use worm castings as a mulch.
- An epsom salts solution to help plants that have phosphorus and magnesium deficiencies.
- Neem oil.
- Use a mulch to cover bare soil.
By the way, companion planting is a whole universe of issues and Wikipedia, where I got some of the above suggestions, has an extensive list of how to use companion planting at this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companion_plants. Also, check out: http://www.sgaonline.org.au/companion-planting/.
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