I received this beautiful plant for Mother’s Day and was over the moon about her as I’ve been really getting into more pink-ish plants. I have a collection of over 80+ plants and thank goodness I quarantine all new plants, as I’m currently dealing with my first mealy bug infestation and am SO paranoid about it as I also propagate and sell plants for extra cash nowadays. 🤮 I’ve made my isopropyl alcohol and dawn dish soap mixture, have been killing the turds individually, and just gave her a complete shower and repot. I’m still finding tiny mealy bugs.
Question is – do we think she’s worth saving? I need either the honest truth or some words of encouragement. 😪
by Dry-Writing4381
29 Comments
Not sure but if you keep treating the plant it may help! Good luck!
If it comes to the point that the plant gives you more stress and feels like a chore instead of enjoyment, toss! Pest control products can also lead to more $ spent than a new plant would cost and still not work out. I can’t weigh in on the mealy bugs situation and what recovery would look like for that plant. Wishing you the best!
Stromanthe Triostar is one of my heartbreaker plants that does not like the humidity levels in my house. It shows up often enough in the houseplant trade that my personal decision would be to toss and replace. If you do keep fighting the mealybugs, I’ve had the best success with systemic pesticides.
If you have access to systemic insecticide that’ll do the job quickly. I had a really bad mealybug infestation on a tall dracaena marginata, tried all oils and concoctions suggested here and finally resorted to a locally produced systemic. It killed the bastards in a single application.
EDIT: forgot to mention, systemic also got rid of the spider mites I had on a variegated weeping fig. It simply does the job.
I have the same plant! I’ve had the same issue and mine survived through an odd technique I had of giving up?! I treated mine with the same and then ended up putting her outside for a bit. Surprisingly they went away after being outside. I think bug predators took care of it ? Maybe consider a natural predator for them
I think it comes down to the sentimental value vs. risk and hassle.
I’d keep isolated, keep up with manual removal as some species are asexual and can multiply from just one, and my superpower for mealybugs is diatomaceous earth. also the monsters can live in soil, so keep that in mind. I just recently had an outbreak for the first time in 6 years. hope we can win our wars!
Got gifted a calla lily this past weekend and worried about the same she’s isolated but she’s my first lily so it’s all new
Mothers Day weekend you really do go into battle with strange plants entering your household
And around this time every year I forget to😔
If worst comes to worse, you can cut it down all the way, replace the soil with fresh soil and wait for it to regrow. I nearly killed mine twice with improper watering and cut it back both times and it’s as good as new now.
The Bonide systemic houseplant insect control did it for me! Of course, never use it outdoors so it doesn’t harm the good insects. It’s $10 on Amazon!
OnGuard Pro-Perm Insect Killer is the way to go. My wife saved her nurseries with that shit.
I’ve used Dead AF in the past. Worked amazing. Also a qtip with alcohol. lol
indoors? if you can, just go with systemic insecticide
Peroxide in the water, maybe?
I just hose every plant down in my yard and then drown them in insecticide.
I totally sympathize, I had the same gorgeous triostar stromanthe and she was to difficult to treat for the massive thrips infestation my collection had 🙁
Every fall I buy ladybugs and dump a few into each of my plants. I no longer put my indoor plants outside seasonally, but the bugs can still get in the tiny screen holes.
If I have a plant like this I break off a piece of it that’s manageable and throw the rest a way. The piece that I save I wash it throughly, repot and spray it down. It will always grow back.
I saw a plant guy on TikTok that put his plant in the bathtub and sprayed it with a strong shower spray and he said that gets all the bugs off and then heavily treated with some kind of pesticide spray after that
I had a bad case of Millie bugs on my hoys rope. I dabbed every single spot I could see and every day I wiped it down with rubbing alcohol unfortunately, I had to cut a lot of it back, but we have been mealy bug free for 7 months or more now. I also changed the soil and kept it isolated from all my other plants (well over 100). You can also look into predatory mites they are amazing for all kinds of pests. They have different ones for different things.
Hey, at least thankfully mealy bugs are the easiest to get rid of (after aphids) in my limited experience. Usually just spraying down with soapy water and dabbing the big blobs with an alcohol qtip gets rid of em for good.
Not like some little shits…
I was gifted a tiny calathea rufibarba division a couple of weeks ago and because i was too sleepy, i plopped it under my grow light without thinking…big mistake…. I started noticing yellowing leaves which confused me at first because i completely forgot about the newly acquired plant, then I realized it was my nemesis causing the ruckus.
Now i have thrips on every single plant and spraying pesticides has destroyed the leaves on my monstera adansonii aurea. 🥲
So yeah, you can do a waterboarding torture soap bath or just toss it to not stress about it too much, it’s really your choice.
Tossed mine outside in dappled sun and shade. All of its problems disappeared. These plants really don’t seem to do well indoors.
>Bonide Systemic Houseplant Insect Control rocks for taking care of mealybugs. It was the only way I have been able to get ride of them without killing my plants
Bonide systemic granules or toss it.
That is one gorgeous plant. I’ve never seen one so pretty. Save her !
I found mealy bugs on my huge monstera and pothos plant after bringing home a new fiddle leaf fig, I was devastated 🙁 I used isopropyl and dish soap spray to clean them and eventually opted for Neem oil and it did the trick! I did 3-4 treatments and they were gone. Don’t give up!! But definitely isolate and be very careful to not contaminate your other plants
So I’m not sure for this plant but I recently had an infestation of mealy bugs on a golden pothos I bought and found they were still there after I thought they were gone and they had of course spread to others. Just after moving into my new place at the beginning of April I made a 1/2 70% isopropyl alcohol and 1/2 water (rough measurements of course) and then used cotton balls run over every leaf for every plant I owned that even kind of looked like it had issues and if I couldn’t reach I used a qtip for those areas. It’s been just over a month now and no sign since and all of my plants are doing really great, no affect to the leaves or anything and not a bug in sight!
Spray isn’t that expensive like neem oil
What medium is the plant in? I only use promix HP indoors period. Its the only medium ive used indoors that doesnt get bugs (unless you go organic)