When someone asks you what would you want to hear first, the good or the bad news, what do you usually say?
Most of the time I opt for the bad news first, and later, the good ones can come and save the mood! In this post, we will be faced with some pleasant and unpleasant situations, but before I start with those bad ones, as an intro, I want to show you the first flowers of the fuzzy plant for this year.
Ruby Blush usually blooms in June in my place, at least my one does it always around this time of the year. So, it started to bring the first flowers, as we see in the first photos. I have now three pots with Ruby Blush, two big ones and one with some cuttings that I obtained when the big one jumped from the stand and broke. The two big pots occupy half of the big stand now, full of long branches that go everywhere. In free mode. I predict more new pots as they are growing like weeds after the rain.
Prepared for the bad news?
Oh my, I should just keep quiet and show the next photo. What comes to your mind if you see alcohol, cotton swabs and plants in the same photo?
Those who have succulents or other plants know it very well. The first word that would come to mind is mealybug. The nasty mealybugs.
They colonized my lucky bells. I saw them on my Aeonium some weeks ago and I took the tactic of removing them with a cotton swab soaked in alcohol. I knew I would have to check the other plants too but there were so many other things going around. My care for the succulent world on the balcony became just watering once a week, and I totally neglected the inspection part. I was not checking if there are bugs so in the meantime, the mealybugs made their family a huge one. So many of them lived a happy life, sucking the essence from my poor plants.
I don't have a macro lens to make better close-up photos of them, but I think the bugs still can be seen. All those white creatures on the stem are mealybugs. So I started. Cotton soaked in alcohol and removing them. It is enough to touch them and they die immediately. One, two, three, five, ten cotton swabs, and still, there were mealybugs around. A never-ending story to remove them. And then, I checked under the surface, in the soil. OMG, they were there too!
In the soil, I have found some white male pupa. Well, when I saw it I didn't know what it was. But then I found another one... and more... I thought that this thing had to do something with the mealybugs and their life cycle. And I was right. It was a male pupa.
They have several stages, and males and females are not the same. Take a look at the next photo:
When I saw those things in the soil, I removed the plants, checked thoroughly around the roots, saw more mealybugs and threw away that soil. The plants were waiting to be repotted, with new soil and in new pots. I took out all the lucky bell plants, the Portulacaria Afra and Gollum Jade (Shrek ears plant). All those where I detected the mealybugs I mechanically removed the bugs with alcohol and took them out from the soil.
The Shrek ears anyway needed a bigger pot. It was all roots just in the pot ( actually a tea mug where it lived until now). It got a new home, a bit bigger one with some fresh soil.
I am thinking about how to prevent the next mealybug attack from my plants. We know that adult females lay many eggs, a few hundred small eggs protected by that waxy cottony-appearing mass. When I saw it for the first time, several months ago or more, I asked @ewkaw what is that cotton-like, spider web thing that I found on one cactus and the underside of leaves of some succulents. She was the first who introduced me to the existence of mealybugs. And the alcohol treatment.
Now I am dealing with them again and I had to find some other answers too, as I think they like to come back. We could pray them with a mixture of water and alcohol, but we should be sure not to harm the plant. If the plant is sensitive, the alcohol could burn the leaves maybe. Neem oil seems to be safe and very recommendable. I found a recipe for a homemade pesticide here.
It is an easy process of making this liquid to spray the plants affected by these nasty mealybugs. Put 1 garlic bulb, 1 small onion, and 1 teaspoon of cayenne pepper in the food processor. We should blend it into a paste and add 4 cups of water. Leave it for one hour and then strain it and add 1 tablespoon of dishwashing detergent. Mix it well. We can spray the parts of the plants where we see the bugs. The liquid can be stored in the refrigerator for a week, if we have to repeat the spraying.
I think that nothing can go wrong if I try this (I don't have cayenne pepper at home right now, so first I should buy it) and if it helps, it will be reported in one of the next updates on this topic.
Ready for the good news?
Half good news, as for some of them I am a bit late. Many of the succulents brought their first flowers. The jelly plant has a very long stem with small white flowers. It was not easy to take a photo of it, as they are so small and in that long stem, they are lost.
The yellow flowers of this plant, which I don't know the name of, are already blooming for a long time, so that is why I am saying that I am late for them. Some are already drying, but it still grows new buds and new flowers are in the process of opening. They are like yellow stars.
Another one I don't have the ID for is having a lot of buds, I suppose they will be white flowers, probably in the shape of stars. My succulents decided not to bloom at the same time. Why would they bloom at the same time, anyway haha? It was just me who wanted to see them all blooming here, but they have their cycle.
Here I already planted the Shrek ears in the new pot. I bought some white small rocks to place on the top of the soil in the pots. Though I wanted smaller rocks, it was the tiniest size that the flower shop could offer me.
So, bad news, good news... We always have them both in the world of plants!
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