This section describes accidental houseplant pests. They can appear if the plant was taken out into the garden or on an open veranda. When transferring a plant from the street, you need to examine it, since pests such as slugs, weevils, caterpillars and others can be found, if any, by looking under the leaves. If the plant was brought into the house and after a while the plant began to lag behind in growth, wilt, or eaten areas of stems, leaves and flowers began to appear, then it is worth checking it for pests. Moreover, if there is no pest on the aerial parts of the plant, then it is possible that it hides in the roots. Therefore, you need to get the plant out of the pot and examine the roots.
Caterpillars
These are mainly garden pests, sometimes falling on houseplants if the flowers are displayed in the garden for summer. Caterpillars come from trees or shrubs under the window. A sure sign of their appearance is hatched holes on the leaves. In the photo, the leaf wrapper caterpillar, in addition to gnawing the edges of the leaves, weaving cobwebs and dazzling branches and leaves, will subsequently be woven into a cocoon from the web, where the caterpillar will begin to turn into a butterfly.
The earwig hides under the leaves during the day, in the ovaries of flowers, and at night it crawls out, eats leaves and young shoots, so carefully examine all the secluded places on the flowers and take insects.
Control measures. Manually remove pests from plants. As a prophylaxis, insecticide spraying can be carried out, but if the plant is standing outdoors, the chemicals are quickly washed away. Caterpillars eat the leaves of plants, but it is not difficult to get rid of them, it is enough to wipe the leaves with a sponge, remove all the cobwebs and insects.
Intavir helps well from leaf gnawers. Unfortunately, pesticides only work on young caterpillars.
Myriapods
These whitish or dark brown insects, similar to a caterpillar with numerous legs, can harm indoor plants exposed to the garden for summer. They fall into pots with flowers with earth from the garden, sometimes with purchased land. Millipedes eat the basal areas of plants and lower leaves, as evidenced by the eaten places in healthy plant tissues. Some types of millipedes are harmless, but unpleasant, even nasty - they do not harm plants, but I would like to get rid of them.
Control measures. Drying the surface of the soil in a pot, sprinkling the soil with dry sand, can be ash. Millipedes hide in dark and wet places, so you can detect and collect pests by placing a wooden plaque, a small piece of linoleum, a circle of cucumber or zucchini on the soil near the plant. Millipedes will be taken under such a trap, from where they can be caught with your hands and thrown away.
Enhitrei
These insects, similar to small white worms (about 1 cm long), can be noticed if you remove the plant from the pot. Enhitrei is an excellent food for aquarium fish, for plants they are considered, in general, harmless, as they feed primarily on dead plant tissues. Enhitrei is a signal that a swamp has been built in the pot, the plant is waterlogged, the roots rot from excessive watering - they are eaten by enhitrei. As a result, the plant is depressed and stunted, dying more from overflow than from white worms.
Control measures. If these pests are found, you need to rinse the roots from the old land and plant the plant in fresh soil. If the plant cannot be transplanted for any reason, then you need to water the soil with an insecticide solution. And carefully loosen the soil. If such white worms appeared in pots of flowers, think, perhaps you are watering flowers too abundantly! Enhitrees are usually introduced with organic fertilizers or garden land. But if the watering is not too frequent, the worms dry up and die.
Weevil
Weevil is a garden pest, but sometimes it falls along with the soil to indoor flowers. Most often affects primrose and cyclamens. However, the subject of the attack of the weevil can be any plant exposed for the summer in the garden.
Beetles eat up leaves, leaving holes in them like a Colorado beetle. Adult weevil beetles are clearly visible on the plant - black, large, with long antennae. But the real harm is brought by larvae, 1 cm long, cream-colored, which the female lays in the soil. Larvae live in the ground and devour roots, bulbs, tubers. If no pest is found during, the roots will be completely eaten and the plant will die.
Control measures. If the root system has not yet been eaten, i.e. the plant has just begun to wilt, then pour the soil with a systemic insecticide (fufan, inta-vir, etc.) and treat the leaves. But it is better, without resorting to chemicals, to transplant the plant into fresh soil.
It helps to cope with the misfortune of transplanting with the replacement of land and the introduction of bazudin into the soil - for newly purchased plants (especially greenhouse and greenhouse), as well as watering the soil with insecticides if the plant does not tolerate transplantation well.
Wood lice
This member of the crustacean family has gills located on the abdomen that need constant moistening, so woodlice wind up in a very moist substrate, in plums, flower boxes. Woodlice are active only in the dark, they eat the juicy parts of plants. Woodlice has a segmented oval body of gray or brown color, the segments of which are soft on the side of the abdomen and rigid above, as if covered with a shell. There are two long antennae ahead. Dimensions about 5-10 mm. The paws are 5 pairs or more visible from the side of the abdomen.
Signs of woodlice in indoor flowers - when small piles of earth appear on the pallet. You may not see the woodlice themselves - they are hiding in the ground. Woodlice start up in leafy land rich in organic matter, and get with purchased land. Therefore, it is always recommended to sterilize the soil before transplantation. The harm from woodlice is that they compact the soil, nailing it with their shell body. If earthworms pass the soil through themselves and loosen it, then the woodlice operates like a pusher. As a result, oxygen access to the roots decreases, they suffocate.
Control measures. Drying the soil surface in a pot, collecting pests manually. In the garden, this method helps to fight woodlice. Boards or damp rags are placed between the ridges, in the morning the pests hide under boards or rags, then they can be collected. Usually, regulation of soil moisture levels is enough to exterminate woodlice.
Tips from the forum:
Acanta: Bought an adiantum bush in an urban greenhouse. And I found woodlice in the pot. Initially, I hoped that, drowning the bush head over heels, I could collect the surfaced animals. But it turned out - they do not pop up! I had to replant the whole plant.
Severina: Pour acarine, helps with woodlice.
Earl: I would not want to use chemicals again. My advice: take a potato, gouge it from the inside, put it in a pot next to the plant, and all the woodlice will gather in it. Then throw out the potatoes along with the pests. Instead of potatoes, you can put a lump of moss-sphagnum on the surface of the earth, it should be a little moist. Woodlice will climb into it and moss can be thrown out.
Lacewing
Lacewing is not a pest! She is the savior of the garden and home flowers from pests.
The lacewing is mistaken for a pest, as this insect lays eggs on the underside of the leaf. In fact, the larvae of some species of lacewings feed on pests of indoor flowers - aphids, thrips, as well as whiteflies, spider mites, mealybugs. They are very similar to ladybug larvae - with an elongated calf with three pairs of legs and powerful jaws.
Often lacewings fly into balcony plants, hiding from bad weather, i.e. not necessarily on plants heavily affected by pests of indoor plants. However, the sight of plant leaves covered with oviposition is also not pleasant.
Lacewing larvae, like ladybug larvae, are harmless to plants - they eat aphids, ticks and other herbivorous insects.