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Years later we’ve finally gotten most of the parasites on our houseplants under control. To refresh your memory, our houseplants have suffered from a combination of scale insects, mealybugs, and spider mites. All of these pests were introduced from infected plants that were either donated to us, or bought from stores (Home Depot).

Control of the pests has consisted of sprays (Ender’s EndAll) and biologic methods. The spray helps to rapidly reduce a large active population, but doesn’t kill eggs. Weeks later, recurrent infestations occur. Ideally, the spray should be used on a regular basis for some time after bugs are no long noticeable. This helps to erradicate newly hatched pests that we can’t visualize — that are hidden in between leaves and stems — before they lay more eggs.

Unfortunately we have too many plants and too many sensitive animals in the house to use pesticide spray that often. So in the past we resorted to killing off the spider mites with spider mite predators.

Biologic control of pests by using other predatory insects is a costly venture — much more expensive than pesticide spray. Yet if the temperature and humidity are proper for the predators to thrive it is orders of magnitude more effective. I had to order and re-order the spider mite killers through the winter that we used them because conditions were not ideal for them. Yet over time, recurrent spider mite flareups became a thing of the past.

Now, we’re dealing with exploding mealybug and scale insect populations as our houseplants go a bit more dormant for the winter. Enter Green Lacewings.

Our Lacewings were shipped as eggs. The larvae of these Green Lacewings are hungry little suckers and once hatched seek out any other insect they can find to feed off of. If they can’t find other insects, they’ll go after one another. This is bad news for scale insects, mealybugs, spider mites, aphids, and lots of other plant-sucking pests. It’s good news for us.

Bananaleafland