How to identify podura (collembola)
You have someone jumping in a pot with flowers - these are most likely podurs or collembolas. Who are they?
There is a large group of soil inhabitants, biological class: Collembola Collembola (Podura) - this includes collembolas, podurs and cattails. They are a type of arthropod, but they are neither spiders nor insects.
Collembolas live in the soil, feed on organic matter (plant and animal remains), as well as microscopic fungi and algae. They prefer a raw substrate, so owners of indoor plants can detect this living creatures if they periodically fill the plants.
The sizes of the representatives of the podur usually range from 0.05 mm to 1 cm. They are so shallow that it is not possible to really see who is jumping in the pot. Sometimes silver-white worms are found in the pallet after watering. They move very quickly, in some species three pairs of legs and antennae are clearly visible. Podurs have a tail - this is a jumping fork that serves to push away from the support, so jumps happen very high.
The color of the collemboles is from pure white, milky transparent, yellow, gray, to black. There are striped: black and yellow or tiger colors. There are, like a caterpillar, a worm or a spider, but they are all boundless. The body is usually elongated oval, fusiform, ovoid.
Pests appear in large numbers in the soil, which remains raw for a week or longer, sometimes eating the ground parts of the plant. They are really capable of harming plants, but only young and tender ones - they overeat seedlings and thin roots.
How to get rid of cattail and podura
The first thing to do to get rid of the cattail or podura is to dry the soil in the pot properly. This is especially important for the health of plants that do not tolerate stagnation of water in the roots, excessive dampness: dracena, ficus, diffenbachia, citrus fruits, gardenia, euphorbia, adenium, brunfelsia, bilbergia, peperomia, gerbera, scheffler, azalea, etc. Most plants tolerate drying - and it is necessary to dry to such a state until the pot becomes noticeably light. You can safely dry the soil in pots with ficuses, scheffler, peperomia, succulents, diffenbachia, lemon, dracena to a state of dust. But some plants do not tolerate complete dryness, gardenia or azalea can turn yellow, lose leaves and die. Therefore, focus on the requirements of plants for care and external condition.
In addition, if the weather is very hot, above 26 ° C, sunny and dry - drying the ground in a pot is difficult for any plants!
The most correct way to take the plant out of the pot and check if there are rotten roots, you may soon have to not only get rid of pests, but also treat diseases: root and stem rot and bacterioses. You need to understand that tails, podurs and collembolas are an indicator of the state of the earth. An indicator that you have a swamp in your pots.
There are plants that love dampness, such as cyperus. But in pots with cyperus, there are almost never podur and fingernail. Do you know why? Because the roots of the cyperus, despite the dampness, are healthy and not rotten! Soil bugs breed where there is decaying organic matter.
So, deal with the state of the roots:
- remove old soil if necessary
- trim rotten roots
- dry the root lump, if required in the shade on the newspaper, or thoroughly blot the roots with a lump of toilet paper
- sterilize fresh soil, especially if using garden soil
- after transplantation into fresh soil, take measures to prevent rot - spill it with phytosporin (2-4 g per 1 liter of water)
- henceforth do not pour plants
The first way to deal with: if there is no way to transplant plants, for example, a palm tree, in the roots of which Podur, planted in a large tub, then you need to water the soil with insecticides: Actara, Tanrek, Apache or any available drug from Colorado beetle. The cattails are very resistant to insecticides, so a single watering and a weak concentration may not help, the actar, for example, needs to be diluted in 8 g per 10 liters of water. Preparations for slugs help to get rid of the nail: for example, Thunder-2. To do this, remove the top layer of earth (about 1 cm), sprinkle the soil with Thunder-2, on top - the removed earth, do not water until the next time.
The second way, if the use of insecticides is not available, and drying the ground does not help, is to powder the entire surface of the substrate with ash, a very thin layer (the method is not suitable for plants that love acidic soil: azaleas, camellias, conifers).
The third way: remove the top layer of the earth and pour 2 cm of clean dry sand. Water so that this layer of sand dries completely. There is no organic matter in dry sand and little air - podurs and cattails do not survive. But after 3-4 months, you need to remove the sand and replace it with a layer of fertile land.
The fourth way: watering the earth in a pot with hot water. Hot, which means about 65 ° C. Plants planted in the ground easily tolerate this procedure (except for orchids and groundcovers). You need to pour hot water several times in a row as another watering.
If the podurs are wound up in a pot with phalaenopsis, you need to remove the orchid from the bark, rinse the roots in water, plant it in clean, non-rotten bark, cut off the rot and dry the sections (with coal).
Tips on how to deal with tails and podurs (from the forum)
Vita: The easiest and most reliable way to get rid of podura is to allow the soil to dry out and no longer flood the plant, adjust watering, as podura prefer waterlogged soil.
Alex: It's easy to deal with podura and mosquitoes - after watering, sprinkle ash on top of the soil with a layer of 0.5 cm, after the soil dries, remove it, taking a little soil - these insects will disappear. Ash has an alkaline reaction, and podures are usually found in acidic soil. So: ash, falling on the soil, simply burns pests - a neutralization reaction occurs. It is not bad to add coal dust to the soil - there will never be mold and fungal diseases.
mIRAge: I got rid of podur bazudin: I poured on the surface of the soil and put the pot with the plant in a sunny warm place. Two days later, the pests disappeared. Two weeks later they appeared again. Then she took the milkweed out of the pot, checked the roots, washed it, scalded the pot and saucer with boiling water, planted and added new land, adding a large dose of bazudin. After the procedure, milkweed dropped leaves, but did not die, overgrown, and there were no more podur.
VeraB: Take a box of matches and stick the head down into the soil all over the pot, with a palisade. Leave for several days (two regular watering, then you can clean up). Usually helps right away.