Transcript:
As much as I want to say that everything is always perfect and happy and healthy in my garden that unfortunately is not the case. I came back from a two-week trip. I knew I had one or two succulents that had mealy bugs, and I thought I had isolated all of them, but when I came back, things looked really bad. So one of the things I wanted to bring up is a lot of people. Ask where mealybug’s come from. I don’t know exactly I mean. Someone had to start somewhere, right, but one thing that I do know Is that mealybug’s love to prey on very weak succulents and one of the things I love about succulents is they can go for a long time without water, but the more underwatered they get the more prone they can be to mealybugs, but the same is also true. If you over water, your succulents over watered succulents are also prone to mealy bugs as are succulents that are blooming. So if you have a succulent, that is blooming, then you’ll want to be really careful and keep your eye out for mealy bugs. I also discovered that I am pretty sure. I have scale on a couple of the succulents so Haworthias I’ve noticed, do not generally get mealy bugs. I’m sure they’re not exempt, but just in general, they don’t get mealy bugs, but these little white specks on here look much more like scale to me, and then it also showed up on this little aeoniu’m zort cop as well. So what I need to do now is treat all of these succulents for mealy bugs. Now normally I would suggest using isopropyl alcohol and that does work pretty well. If you have just a few a few little mealy bugs here and there. But for an infestation this big and on this many plants and to really make sure it’s eradicated quickly. I am going to recommend using fertilum and essentially what this is. It’s its primarily neem oil. Now I do not generally recommend using neem oil on succulents because it can be extremely damaging to them. However, as you can see, most of these succulents are already very damaged, but the most important thing when you are using this fertilism or when you’re using, um, just a neem oil is okay. You can’t see the instructions there to follow the instructions for diluting it. So you basically mix up. I think it’s like a tablespoon. Maybe of the fertilum into a gallon of water, so this is extremely concentrated. It will last you a really long time. I definitely recommend diluting it as they say or diluting it. Even more one of the things that can happen. When you spray succulents with the fertilum, you can see here some damage to the farina. That kind of white powdery coating. That’s on a lot of echeverias, and you can see how speckled it is here that is from having sprayed this with fertilum a little while ago. It doesn’t always do it. I think the last time I did. It may have been not diluted quite enough, but it can still do that. This is an Echeveria afterglow. It’s very underwatered. It’s very sad for a lot of reasons, but you can see the splotchiness where the Farina is removed and that is where the fertilum spray was on the leaves so other areas where you can still see that farina that white powdery coating intact those areas just didn’t get the spray on them, whether you’re treating with alcohol or whether you’re treating with the fertilum or neem oil or another solution, a really really important Part of trading for mealybugs is to make sure that you keep them out of direct sunlight. Any of these chemicals that you’re applying to the succulents they they do have an effect on the succulent’s leaves, and so you want to keep them out of direct sunlight to minimize the amount of damage that’s done, so I’d recommend keeping them in the shade or indoors for about two to three days just to play it safe. Now once you have the fertility mixed up, according to the directions, I like to pour it into. Oh, there you go for this. It was a quarter teaspoon per bottle, so not very much at all, and I just like to pour it into a water bottle or spray bottle. Excuse me and then spray it on directly, so you’ll want to do this in an area that you can easily clean. Ideally, you’d actually do it outside and in the case of these, I’m going to have to drench all of the leaves in order to make sure this is gone, so this is going to take quite a while to get the whole thing you’ll notice I’m using it on the stream setting. I will probably come back and do the spray. I’d really rather not have this all over my table, but clearly it’s gonna get on there, but the reason why I’m using the stream initially is to get in between the leaves. One of the reasons why mealybug’s tend to stick around for a while is because people don’t generally treat in between the leaves. Now again, this one is most likely scale, But you can see on this Crassula moon glow. You can see how it’s like way in between all the leaves here, you can see all those little fuzzy white spots and really the only way to get that is to use a spray and have it get down in between the leaves. I know a lot of people will say, you know, they treat it with a q-tip and then they rub it on, but honestly. If you really want to get these get rid of these guys for good and I promise, you really do want to get rid of them for good. Then I do recommend using a spray bottle and just getting it right down in between the leaves. One other thing I forgot to mention is I would also highly recommend wearing gloves wearing a mask wearing eye protection when you’re using this because it is really potent stuff. You really don’t want to be breathing it in. So I’d also suggest doing it in a really well ventilated area ideally outside and then just keep it away from kids animals, anything that it could potentially put in danger, So I switched this to where it’s more of a spray. Now I’m gonna go ahead and just really soak this moon glow and you can see it. Has it all over? Oh, so sad now. Most of these succulents are also as I mentioned very underwatered, so you might wonder. When do you water after you’ve treated for something like this? I recommend waiting at least a few days till you know that these are really dried out before you water again. And if you’re wondering how often you can treat, it kind of depends on how much you want to risk the risk damaging the leaves of your succulents again. You know, the damage from the neem oil is probably better than the damage from the mealybugs. However, you don’t want to overdo it, so I would not. I would not treat these with fertilum more than once in a week, so you want to keep them isolated? Keep them away from all your other succulents so that it doesn’t spread, and then I would not treat with the fertility more than once a week. Give it some time to recover. First, you’ll also want to place your succulents in a well-ventilated area that way and even maybe run a fan on them that way, the fertilizer or the alcohol, whatever you’re using will actually dry up fairly quickly. I have yet to find a concrete answer on this, but I am pretty positive. That succulents will absorb water that is left sitting on the leaves and it’s much more likely to cause rot, so that’s one of the things that’s really tricky about treating succulents for mealybugs is that you’re going to be getting them wet, so you really do want them to dry out as quickly as possible and just keep them in a well ventilated area. Don’t water them for a couple days and hopefully within a week. Your mealybug problem is gone. Same with scale, so you can treat, um, you can treat scale with this as well. It works for pretty much any sort of insect or fungus that is growing on your succulents. So hopefully you don’t have to use this video, but if you do. I hope that everything recovers quickly for you and that, you know it starts to look good starts to heal pretty quickly. Do keep in mind that all of this damage that’s done from the mealybug’s done from the neem oil, so all of the damage here to the Farina That’s all from spring with neem oil a while ago and it won’t go away. It won’t heal, but what you’re looking for is really healthy, new growth coming from the center of your succulent and that would indicate that things are back to normal. you!