Thanks Mike,

I cant remember for sure, but are the eggs in the dirt? If i could kill the eggs and the flies.......

Oh, and is Neem organic? Is there a timeframe between using it and eating the fruit?
Emma

This post was edited by Erod1 on Wed, May 21, 14 at 11:04

yes it is organic. it is made from the neem tree. The directions should say how long to wait before harvest. I dont recall.

Emma, I like Mike's suggestion of the sticky yellow traps. They're easy to make or some nurseries sell sticky traps in packages.

You also can confuse whiteflies by putting shiny, silvery mulching material beneath the plants, They sell a fairly pricey silvery mulch in some garden magazines, but I know people who have used silver mylar gift wrap and even heavy-duty aluminum foil as mulch on the ground beneath the affected plants.

Normally beneficial insects like lady bugs, green lacewings and predatory bugs (assassin bugs, minute pirate bugs, etc.) prey upon the white flies and help control them. You can buy and release beneficial insects if your own garden is lacking them.

I'd avoid spraying any pesticide type product on the plants themselves because whiteflies have developed a tolerance of or resistance to them so the pesticide products often don't harm them, but often kill the very beneficial insects that normally help control them. Neem might work work on the whiteflies, but I rarely use it. For me, spraying anything on the plants at all is always the drastic last resort.

Dawn

Thanks Mike and Dawn,

I will try hosing the plants with water and using some tin foil underneath them to confuse the little buggars. ( the tinfoil wont burn the plants will it, seems like that would get really hot???)

I do have assassin bugs and ladybugs, but unfortunately i also have a ton of birds as im in a wooded area so i cant rely too much on beneficial insects.

Neem will be my last resort. Ive been lucky enough to go completely organic, no sprays of any kind, the past several years and want to continue to do so.

Hello! I'm new to this blog, but hoping for help! We have a screened in pool enclosure where I have two tomatoes in pots. The newest one is a Husky Cherry Tomato and has whiteflies. I read on another site to make a soapy water spray using 1 part dish detergent and 4 parts water. I made this and sprayed it on the plant yesterday. Now, today, the leaves all look brown and curled on the edges. I took it outside today and sprayed it with the hose. Have I killed it???? What should I do?????

Hi Nikkismom,

Your burned your plant foliage when you sprayed it with a detergent spray (more about soap vs. detergent in a moment) as is readily apparent from the burned foliage. I am guessing that by the time you hosed off the spray residue with the hose, the damage to the foliage already had been done.

Have you killed it? Well, I won't say you killed it but the plant obviously is severely damaged. If it were my plant, I'd move it into the shade for 2-4 days to give it some time to recover without being in direct sun. I'd carefully clip off all the severely damaged foliage, but would take great care to save every halfway-healthy leaf. The more healthy leaves it still has after you clip off the badly damaged ones, the better the chances are that it will recover. Keep the soil moist but not sopping wet and don't feed the plant for the next week or two. Just let it focus on recovering. After just a few days you'll either see new growth coming out or you won't, and that will tell you if the plant is going to recover or if it won't.

Using soap sprays can be tricky and there's a couple of reasons why. I generally only use commercially-produced soap sprays---I don't use soap sprays often, but if I feel compelled to use one, I prefer to use the Safer brand, which is easily found on store shelves. Mixing up your own soap spray is risky because one mis-step in the formulation and you have created a spray that can kill your plants or at least harm them severely.

The active ingredient in true soap sprays is potassium salts of fatty acid, and that is the ingredient that kills some insects. If you absolutely must mix up your own soap spray, be sure you purchase and use a soap, not a detergent. Some of the true soaps generally found on store shelves are Murphy's Oil Soap, Ivory, and Fels Naptha. Be sure you do not mix up too strong of a formulation because while soaps at a low concentration are pesticides, at a slightly higher concentration they are herbicides. You also can use a castile soap like any of the soaps in the Dr. Bronner's line, but even these products have additives I'd rather not spray on my garden plants. I do use Dr. Bronner's Peppermint soap, for example, to deter ants and make them move a pathway if they are continually trying to walk through an area (like their one-time trail right beside our outdoor water faucet) where we also walk. By spraying their path with peppermint soap, I encouraged them to move it elsewhere and then we no longer had to deal with having red ants biting us when we were hooking up the water hose to the faucet. I wouldn't spray that Peppermint soap spray on my plants though.

You stated that you used a dish detergent. Detergent is not soap and soap is not detergent. You never want to spray detergent on desirable garden plants because detergents are made of petroleum by-products and petroleum by-products are not good for plants. I realize that you can Google and find about a million and one recommendations to spray plants with Dawn dish detergent, but I'd never, ever use a detergent on plants because it can harm them. Just because you find something recommended on the internet, that doesn't necessarily mean you should do it! Dawn dish detergent contains degreasers, which are great for washing greasy pots and plants, but are not something you want to spray on plants.

The whole soap spray issue is further complicated for those of us who live in very hot climates with intense sunlight. I don't even use Safer insecticidal soap when the temperatures are over 90 degrees, and we spend most of the summer at temperatures over 90 degrees. Even a commercial soap formulation can damage plant foliage when used during hot weather or in intense sunlight. If I felt I had a pest that absolutely, positively needed to be sprayed with a soap spray in the summer months, I'd (a) used a purchased commercial spray and use it following label directions, (b) spray in the evening near sunset, (c) leave it on the plant for only a few minutes, and then (d) hose all of it off the plants thoroughly before I went inside. The insecticidal soaps only kill the insects they directly hit, so there is no reason to leave the spray on the plants for longer than the few minutes needed.

You're certainly not the first person to hurt or kill plants using homemade insecticidal soap and you won't be the last. So, I'd chalk this one up as a "Lesson Learned" and try to avoid repeating it again. I know some folks who have literally killed their entire gardens by spraying with a homemade insecticidal soap spray from a recipe that they got off the internet. It all goes back to soap sprays being pesticides when you have a very low % of soap in the spray and a herbicide if you have a higher % of soap in the spray. Using detergent instead of soap is another common error, as is spraying during high temperatures or intense sunlight. So, roll all those up into a bundle and you just learned a valuable lesson about what not to do.

Good luck with your plant. I hope it recovers.

Dawn

I replied to you last night, Dawn! Don't know why it's not here. But, thanks for the info. I actually went outside after reading your reply late last night and moved the plant to where the sun wouldn't get to it this morning. There is actually growth at the top of it and the top leaves are still green! Maybe I didn't kill it, after all! Anyway, I'm headed out now to trim the dead leaves off and will keep my fingers crossed. Strange that I got the detergent and water advice from a gardening site! Live and learn! I'll let you know how the plant is looking by the end of the week.

And, I must say, I found it a bit ironic that the detergent I used is Dawn and that is your name!

Thanks, again!
Gail

I can't imagine that ratio of soap to water being on a garden site. What were they thinking?

Gail,

You're welcome. Yes, I was thinking about the irony myself. I have to add that I have had the name for 55+ years and they didn't ask my permission to stick my name on a dish detergent. (grin)

I think that we all have to be really careful when using any sort of formulas found on websites because anybody can literally post anything, whether it is correct or not. There's not really any internet police coming along and saying "that formula is incorrect so you must remove it". So, when you use any formula you find on the internet, it always is a "use at your own risk" sort of thing. If you should decide to use an internet formula again, I think it would be wise to test the spray on one plant, wait 48 hours to see if damage appears, and then decide if you feel it is safe to use it on all your plants.

As Carol pointed out, it is very odd that the ratio of soap to water was so high on the site you visited. I believe the standard "safe" percentage of soap vs. water in an insecticidal soap formula should be 2% soap to 98% water, and it must be soap, not detergent. I have seen formulas for all sorts of concoctions on the internet and I just wouldn't mix them up and spray them on my plants unless I was absolutely positive the formula would do no harm.....and it is hard to be 100% positive about anything in the garden because a spray that might not be damaging at 70 or 80 degrees can be very damaging when sprayed on plants at 90 or 95 degrees. I just think it always is better to be safe than sorry.

Carol, I have no answer for that, but I was wondering it myself.

Dawn