Daily care and maintenance of indoor plants helps them grow and grow stronger. Properly planted and grown in good conditions, they practically do not get sick if you keep their familiar environment. However, any disease can be brought from the street: on clothes and shoes, with a bouquet of flowers or leaves.
What insects are the most dangerous for indoor plants
Harmful insects can also be brought from the outside, they enter the room and through open windows, plants are besieged when they are taken out to the balcony. Among all pests, there are several most dangerous insects for plants. Some of them suck out the juices of the plant, others gnaw holes in them, turning them into a sieve.
Quite a lot of trouble for flower growers is caused by aphids. These are small insects, no larger than 5 mm in size. Depending on the species, aphids are green, black and brown.
If a houseplant does not grow well, does not bloom, and its leaves are twisted into tubules, it means that aphids have worked on it. The peculiarity of this pest is that it multiplies rapidly and literally sticks around the plant, sucking the juice out of it. Greenery quickly withers and dies.
The spider mite also belongs to the category of insects that suck juice. It usually lives on the underside of leaves, where it accumulates its cobweb. From the activity of the spider mite, the leaves of the plant turn yellow and fall off, the green pet wilts before our eyes and may die completely if you do not get rid of the small pest in time. The tick appears especially often in warm and dry rooms.
Shields and false shields got their name due to the body covered with a flat or convex shield. They pierce the skin of a plant and suck the juice out of it. As a rule, both adults and larvae do this. The plant, after the intervention of these insects, turns yellow and deforms. Some false shields can release a sticky liquid called “honeydew”. A sooty fungus appears on it, and the plant is covered with a black coating that looks like soot.
Worms most often live on begonias, geraniums, ferns, cacti and citrus fruits. Here they settle in whole families on the underside of leaves, on branches, on apical shoots. They can be seen immediately – there is a white cotton coating on the bodies of the worms. Both adult insects and their larvae can destroy the plant.
What insects are the most dangerous for indoor plants
Thrips can appear in warm and dry rooms. These are winged black or brown pests that live on the leaves below. There thrips form colonies. They feed, like previous pests, on plant sap. If light dots appear on the leaves, then the leaves will soon change color and fall off, and with it the buds and flowers will disappear. Thrips, like false shields, leave secretions on the leaves of plants, on which a soot fungus then develops. The peak of thrips activity occurs in spring and summer.
Springtails or podura are white, wingless, jumping insects. They are very small – only 1-2 mm. They appear and multiply not on the plant itself, but in the soil, if it is always damp and cold there. Springtails affect not only leaves, but also seeds, seedlings, stems. Where podura are present, brown spots appear. These are ulcers. However, the springtails disappear, one has only to stop watering the plant, and sprinkle the earth in a pot with a little sand. To eliminate the possibility of the appearance of this pest, before planting the plant, you need to warm the soil well in a sealed container. This should be done within 10-30 minutes – it all depends on the amount of soil.
What insects are the most dangerous for indoor plants
Pest control can be quite difficult, especially indoors, when chemical exposure is prohibited. In such cases, mechanical processing is practiced, namely, manual collection of insects. This is easy to do if the insects are large. Small pests survive with the help of phytoncidal and insecticidal plants, as well as greens, the juice of which is detrimental to insects. These are onions, garlic, tops of tomatoes and potatoes, citrus peels and tobacco.
