I read your information with great interest. I’m writing to ask advice. I have a fuschia that I’ve had for nine years. It has become a lovely tree, and lived in our living room. This year, for the fist time, it became infested with white flies. I used insecticidal soap, then something called pyeolin (sp?) and then took it outside on our balcony (we have no access to a yard) and sprayed it with Sevin very very thoroughly. Well, the white flies are still very populous, and I’m writing to ask it it is worth my while trying to defeat them with more products, such as Permethrin and Bifen, and buying a sprayer or whether in this instance I should just concede defeat? Now that they have also infested the plants on my balcony–pansies in peat-moss planters, I imagine need to throw those away too, and get rid of all the dirt, or they’ll come forth again in the Spring. Is that true? Please advise! Thank you.
There is no doubt that whiteflies can be a persistent and annoying pest. But with the right combination of products, you can get any population under control. They key is persistence. If you stay the course, they can be defeated. Throwing any plant away because it has a whitefly infestation should not be an option; failure to control the local population now means any plants brought into the environment will have the same problem develop until the local whiteflies are controlled so you really don’t have an option here if you wish to keep any plant in the future.
To get control of this problem, you will have to committ to the program. This means using several products we have listed in our WHITEFLY CONTROL article. The key components for you will be the BIFEN and NYLAR. Adding some of the SPREADER STICKER to the tank mix is probably the smart thing to do as well just as an added measure. A combination of these products applied weekly for 3-4 weeks will solve the problem. Use them twice the second month just to make sure the problem is over. There after you can go to a “once every 2 month” treatment routine and the whiteflies will remain under control.
Additionally, you’ll need to treat the surrounding plants which are either showing signs of infestation or are plants you’d like to keep whitefly free. By maintaining a tight reign over what they have access to you’ll be able to stop them from taking over. The Bifen, Nylar and Spreader Sticker is a combination we’ve been selling for many years that has proven it can handle the toughest infestation and throwing away plants is not needed when these products are employed.
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