I have a few non-prime spots open in my strawberry tower, and I didn’t want to put really good expensive strawberries in there because they’d either die or produce badly anyways. Now I’m not sure if it was a good idea, but I saw some half-off strawberry plants at the nursery yesterday and they didn’t look too bad, so I picked them up.
I was 100% prepared for them to be infested with something, so I chopped off all dodgy looking leaves and all flowers right away and am keeping them quarantined inside for at least 1-2 weeks (all my other strawberries are outside on my balcony). I rinsed them off very thoroughly, first with running tap water then with slightly soapy water from a squirt bottle. the plan is to do that twice a day until I see no more bugs.
Here’s all the bug varieties I found before rinsing this morning:
My guess is that it’s just green aphids? Although that fat round fella from the first picture and the white guys from the last picture are throwing me for a loop, so I’m not 100% sure.
Do you think rinsing twice a day will be good enough to get rid of them?
They all look like aphids. The white things on the last image are their discarded skin casts from molting.
Food grade diatomaceous earth. Just get a duster or put some on your palm and blow it onto the plants. It rinses of easily, great for the soil as well.
Yeah, that’s my preference too. I had a shitty roommate that brought home a flea-invested cat. We spent weeks trying different sprays, powders, shampoos, bug bombs, etc. They just kept coming back.
Finally got a bag of DE and dusted the house. You could watch the fleas come out of the carpet and die in seconds. They were completely gone overnight.
Cheap, easy, kills any insect it touches, and it’s mostly safe. Just try not to breathe it in.