Whitefly advice needed

[glallotments]

JB may be referring to enviromesh.

[freddy]

I use Anti White Fly netting which is a smaller mesh than enviromesh and I get no problems.

Hi glallotments, thanks for the reply, but apparently there is something more effective, but johnboy aint telling

Cheers...Freddy.

[Johnboy]

Hi Freddy,
I do apologise for not replying sooner but I have been away and have had masses to catch-up with.
Anti White Fly netting I obtain from a commercial source and it is exceedingly expensive and I happen to have some left over from when this property was my Nursery. At 2M wide it is around £240 per roll.
It is finer than "Envronmesh" and the AWF netting was bought when the Nursery next door became totally infested with the white fly and infested half the county of Herefordshire and was ultimately closed down by the Ministry. Being organic the owner refused to spray! He went on to sell imported bedding plants and the next thing he passed on to me was Vine Weevil. He died and I bought the property and it took nearly 3 years to get rid of the pests. Hence my dislike of things 'too Organic' and my adoption of Pragmatic methods.
I am now only using up what was left over from some time past.
JB.

[freddy]

Hi Johnboy, thanks for the reply. It looks like my sprouts are going to be totally ruined by this pest. If there were an effective spray, then I would use it. I'm wondering if by using Enviromesh, predators are being held at bay, any thoughts ?

Cheers...Freddy.

[Nature's Babe]

Maybe those yellow stickers used in greenhouses Primrose? Or spray with a soap solution ? Or grow a few cloves of garlic in the pots to fool them?
mine are still fruiting but will watch them carefully overwinter, thanks for the
warning. Whitefly have not been a problem for me yet, loads of predators
in the garden, hoverflies and ladybirds still evident,

[glallotments]

You'd need an awful lot of yellow stickers NB!!

[Nature's Babe]

I was thinking for protecting Primroses indoor chilli plants Gallotments, not outdoors

[Johnboy]

Hi Freddy,
White Fly do not appear to have any persistent predators and they reproduce so rapidly that they are extremely hard to combat.
It seem amazing the way WF seem to find a way to get at a crop.
My plants are protected from day one having learned from bitter experience. Should I be unlucky and still get an attack I treat with Nicotine. If the crop is protected and you spray under the netting then you are not going to harm any likely predators or other friendly insects.
Against White Fly spraying should be at 4 day intervals.
JB.

[freddy]

Hi again Jouhnboy. Of course, I've heard of Nicotine, but is it bought as an insecticide, or is it something that one would prepare for themselves ? If it IS something that one has to prepare, could you please advise how this is done. With thanks...Freddy.

[Johnboy]

eldom Hi Freddy,
Nicotine is a professional product and not available to the normal home gardener. I can buy it as a retired professional but in fact I am a smoker and make my own concoction from saved dog-ends. I very seldom have to resort to spraying anything although I am not against spraying.
This is all part and parcel of Pragmatic growing the policy I persue.
JB.

[Nature's Babe]

I was wondering why I haven't had a whitefly problem for years and it may be because i have loads of their natural predators particularly garden spiders,( their webs are everywhere,) and hoverflies, damsel bugs. Natural enemies of whitefly include small birds, spiders, lacewings, hoverflies, ground beetles, mirid bugs and damsel bugs. The adults and larvae of some ladybirds also feed on whiteflies. I admit when I first stopped spraying i had to grit my teeth and suffer a few losses, but now the predators seem to have it under control. I don't like house spiders much but the garden variety
are so useful,they weave webs over cane fruit and catch incoming pests, and carry their eggs on their backs,while working the soil I see as many spiders as worms and the water spiders are fascinating too.

[Johnboy]

Hi NB,
I have yet to find anything organic that will clear up White Fly. The time when White Fly are at their worst most of the predators are not about.
I have yet to see a bird go anywhere near a crop infected with White Fly.
I would suggest to you that you have just been very lucky.
JB.

[Nature's Babe]

Well Johnboy if its luck, the luck has held for 5-6 years. The garden was extremely overgrown and hadn't been cultivated for about 15 - 20 years so a lot of wildlife was present when we took over.

[glallotments]

I don't get whitefly in my garden but the allotment is infested with the things - it seems a bit like blight really. I guess it's a case of the whitefly colonising the habitat that has the most host plants. The whitefly on the plot don't seem to bother flowers etc more brassicas and interestingly weeds!!

[alan refail]

I have commented a number of times on whitefly threads in the past. I always sound smug when I say that since moving to Wales I have not seen a single whitefly, brassica or greenhouse, in over ten years. But I do sympathise with those suffering the problems with them I endured on allotments in Yorkshire over twenty years. My experiences then were, as Johnboy suggests, that whitefly have few effective natural predators, and those there may be cannot keep up with their rapid rate of reproduction.

I was wondering why I haven't had a whitefly problem for years and it may be because i have loads of their natural predators particularly garden spiders,( their webs are everywhere,) and hoverflies, damsel bugs. Natural enemies of whitefly include small birds, spiders, lacewings, hoverflies, ground beetles, mirid bugs and damsel bugs. The adults and larvae of some ladybirds also feed on whiteflies.

I have never seen a bird eating whitefly: I've always thought it would be to them like us eating flakes of polystyrene packing. I would doubt that garden spiders are a natural predator; yes, you will see countless whiteflies caught in webs, but only as they fly past and get trapped. Hoverfly and ladybird larvae are usually too few in number to cope with a serious whitefly infestation. I always assumed mirid bugs were capsid bugs, which are nasty little suckers in their own right!

The only conclusion I can draw from the fact that I have no whitefly is that I have no whitefly, not that I have a particularly effective set of predators.