HELP! Losing battle?

9 years ago

I grew a potted grapefruit tree from a seed 16 years ago, and since I am a terrible gardener it has bravely survived much.

Without fail I brought it outside in the hot summer, and back in the winter and it actually flourished until 3 summers ago when it became infested with spider mites.

I cleaned it all up and they were gone for a year before whitefly and scale (simultaneously no less) took over. I was told at the local greenhouse to use a 1-10 ratio of sunlight detergent to water, making sure I got every leaf top and bottom. I removed all soil and let the root ball soak (hoping to drown the little jerks), and changed the pot, in an effort to avoid any eggs. After a few months the infestation went down but was still bad and even spread to my curly willow, spider plant and then killed my herb garden. Last year I bought some insecticidal soap and sprayed it with that weekly but found that the tree was frying faster than the bugs were.

This year I accidentally left it out on a few cold nights where the temp dropped very low and all of the scale dried up and died and the whitefly were nowhere to be seen. At this point I celebrated and was very much relieved.

It stayed this way until I found (this morning) that not only was the scale back in full force (everywhere), but small spiders (black, maybe 5mm from leg to leg) had made webs and were just hanging out. Honeydew all over the floor and dripping down the stalks so now I am totally frustrated. I desperately want to save it but the harsh stuff nearly killed it the first time.

What do I do now??

Please, please help!

Comments (8)

jean001a
9 years ago
I think the "harsh" part was removing all the soil from the roots, then soaking the rootball.
Neither scale nor whitefly reside in the soil.
hoosierquilt USDA 10A Sunset 23 Vista CA
9 years ago
Well, treat for scale and spider mite immediately. Try to isolate your tree, so any other indoor plants don't get infested. As Jean mentioned, not sure if your removing all the soil will kill your tree or not, was not necessary, and I would use a more appropriate product to treat your infestations with. If you look on our forum, we have many mentions of treatments for both. They can be very persistent, leaving them out in the cold is NOT a treatment. And will simply further shock an already compromised citrus tree. So, get proper chemicals to treat both, either organic or non-organic (your choice, your preference), and treat, treat, treat.

Patty S.
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Llionna
Original Author
9 years ago
So I guess the question becomes... What were the little white bugs that jumped out of the soil when I watered it? They were all inside the soil and moving around like tiny grasshoppers...? I assumed (knowing obviously very little) that they were one of the stages of the whitefly. Did I seriously have 3 separate parasites?

So:Update: Spiders are gone, tree is looking ok-ish ( no more dead leaves etc), but scale is giving me an all out war. The stuff I've got says I can only use it 1 X weekly, can I be using anything else more often, or should I just stick with it?
BarbJP 15-16/9B CA Bay Area
9 years ago
Whitefly larvae are on the leaves, they look kind of like tiny scale. What you saw may have been spring-tails if they jumped like that.

And, sure, you could have more than one insect problem at a time.
Socal2warm
9 years ago
You know, winter actually serves a purpose. While citrus definitely prefers warmer mild climates, it is also a fact that citrus growing in colder regions typically does not suffer all the disease common to citrus in warmer climates. The cold winter temperatures kill off the little insects and disease. You might try getting your trees some cold exposure, instead of keeping them inside the entire winter.
tcamp30144(7B N.ATLANTA)
9 years ago
If you could post some pictures of the tree in the problem it would help a lot.The picture is what I use for spider mites and bug seems to work very well.
Trace

This post was edited by Tcamp30144 on Sun, Feb 1, 15 at 17:58
dena_eft
9 years ago
If you have scale, i would say to just kiss your tree good bye.
tcamp30144(7B N.ATLANTA)
9 years ago
Scale on the citrus tree is not a death sentence easiest way to get rid of scale is to take alcohol on the paper towel. And wipe down all branches and leaves to remove the scale the alcohol kills the scale along with the spider mites. After that spray tree with the product I took pic of I had to do this with a kumquat tree 2 years ago and it bounced back fine.
Trace