Cleanliness: The First Step to Defeating Orchid Pests

Orchids, like all plants, have natural enemies in the form of insects and other small creatures. Keep an eye out for red spiders, cockroaches, thrips, ants, woodlice, slugs and snails.

To grow orchids successfully, you must take measures to defeat these pests before they can damage your plants. There are specific things you do to eradicate each kind of pest that you might have. The best defense against orchid pests of all types is cleanliness.

In spite of all agriculture control efforts, pests will ride along with a certain percentage of imported plants.However, even nursery-grown orchids can have pests lurking in their potting soil or within their root structures.

Check all new plants thoroughly before bringing them into your home. Before anything else, you should destroy every pest that you can find by visual inspection. If you do not, in time they will destroy the foliage, ruining the plant’s appearance if not killing it. The flowers too will be destroyed by these marauders, which is frustrating after you’ve lavished care and expense on a plant.

Do you already have orchids in your home or garden? Then you should treat a new orchid arrival with a degree of suspicion. Isolate it as much as you can from other plants until you’ve had time to inspect and clean it. You should waste no time in ridding your plant of any and all insects you happen to find on it.

Washing every part of a plant’s bulbs, roots and leaves can make it almost impossible for pests to remain alive on it. The best method is a simple one: thoroughly clean the plant’s bulbs and leaves. First, shake the plant out of the pot. Next, cut away all decayed roots that you see. Then, wash the sound roots in clean fresh water. Fnally, re-pot the plant in a clean container with new material.

Done efficiently, this is a pretty certain means to get rid of tiny pests that are hard to spot because of their size or coloration. Some pests might be observed in the form of little eggs. Others appear as insects but are so tiny they cannot be seen without a magnifying glass. Regardless of the difficulty in spotting them, pests of all kinds will be destroyed if you follow the cleaning procedure sketched above.

A good guide to orchid growing will have many more tips and suggestions for making sure that a pest doesn’t put an end to your prized plants. The most up-to-date guide to expert orchid cultivation, it is widely acknowedged, is Orchid Care Expert by Nigel Howard, which is available to be downloaded online. Mr. Howard’s ebook is a complete education in itself, great for neophytes as well as the more experienced. Also, check out the Orchid Secrets web site, which has a growing library of information on all aspects of orchid cultivation.