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kate_c_m

Black flying pests in Arizona room

Kate.C.M
12 years ago

Hi everyone,

I just recently moved to Tucson, AZ from WI and was an avid gardener back home so I've been itching to start a garden here. Last spring I bought some tomato and pepper plants to put in our Arizona-room. There are 2 sections of the room with soil that drain directly outside. They were doing just fine with how I watered them and the amount of sunlight they got but after awhile I noticed a bug problem.

Little black flying bugs were all around the base of my plants. After turning some of the dirt I also noticed they were deeper in the soil where I also found perfectly round yellow-ish eggs (I am almost positive they were not fertilizer balls)

The bugs weren't eating at the leaves as far as I noticed, probably just the root systems. Although, on one of my plants I noticed it was looting really bumpy/warty towards the very base of the stem. My plants would start to shrivel and some had browning leaves (might have been due to sunburn). They dropped all of their flowers and stopped growing.

I've tried spraying them with soapy water, dusting them with pesticide powder and mixing the powder into the soil.

I guess it worked for awhile.. but it was expensive for how quickly they came back.

I transplanted them all into large pots with new potting soil that was mixed with the powder as a last attempt to save them.

All of my plants died except for 1 pepper and 1 tomato plant. The pepper plant continued to seemingly thrive and grow but never produce flowers, the tomato plant had flowers and even a few green tomatos that then stopped ripening & dropped said flowers. Both eventually died as well, along with a bamboo bush I moved into the room for sunlight (I noticed the bugs in that pot too after awhile, the leaves all died)

What are these bugs? They come back whenever I try to grow plants in the Arizona room even after nothing has been in there for months. The only things managing to survive are 2 [benjamin fig trees?] and some viney succulent ground cover with pink flowers that were there before I moved here.

I give up on the powder pesticides. Would ladybugs be a good option?

I might try container gardening NOT in the Arizona room but I'm afraid the little buggers will find there way to anything they can destroy :C

Thanks for any help!

Kate

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