Identifying White Spots on Tropical Plants & Remedies

I got this email that we want to get to from Karen, who says, ‘good morning. Can you please identify the white specks on this plant and how I should treat it? This happens to me year after year on this type of flower. Thank you very much.’

So it is common. And those little white specks are thrips. They are little teeny weeny bugs that they love. They love open petaled flowers, like million bells, mandevilla, those types of things.

That’s one of the main reasons, actually, why we keep the petunias and the million bells outside of the greenhouse, because they thrive in a greenhouse environment. They are very easy to control. So usually a soap spray, we use an ivory soap mixture and water, or you can just get an insecticidal soap. You just want to spray in the evening. And fertilizing and keeping them healthy is always a good thing to do, because the healthy plants are going to be able to fight them off a lot more.

Is there any way to prevent them before you get them? You can do the systemic and stuff. But usually, as long as they’re being kept healthy, and you’re watering them regularly, and they’re doing well and thriving, soap spray is enough to knock them out. It is usually just like your general 16 ounce spray bottle. And it’s about a tablespoon to two tablespoons. Two tablespoons is about heavy.

Then usually, most of the time, ladybugs and just natural predators will take care of them. They like it when there’s a real lack of airflow and that kind of stuff, too. Good idea to kind of trim off some that are really bad.  Always, always evening spray. Because if you spray midday, just the chemical itself being on that leaf can burn. Even just water. That’s why we always say do not water the foliage with things. It can cause diseases and that kinds of things to spread. But it also can burn your leaves.

And just kind of do some inspection on all of your plants, especially if you’re starting to see things looking a little stunted or funny looking. But that’s what that is. They’re very common on Million Bells and Petunias.

But, be very careful when you do that. It’s easy to burn, you know, I’ve done it before, even recently. If you are going to use it, you can buy just an insecticidal. We have that already pre-mixed. And it is basically, but a homemade remedy, which is a lot of times that we honestly do that in the greenhouse, too. But because it’s just ivory soap it is very gentle. I’ve experimented and used Dawn before, and it does burn the leaves, even when you’re spraying when you’re supposed to. It’s more pure and burns much faster.

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