Late Spring Pest Control

Hungry Hungry Insects

Every year, the spring growth flush encourages a population explosion of sucking and chewing insect pests, all keen to feast on your garden.

Insects like aphids, mealybug, thrips and whiteflies feed on sweet and sugary plant sap. This depletes important nutrients from the plants, reducing their vigour (and your harvest). Feeding insects often cause leaves to permanently discolour and distort. Sap-sucking insects can also transmit plant viruses while they feed.

To add insult to injury, sap-sucking insects excrete a sugary substance called honeydew onto leaves, which attracts unsightly sooty mould to grow on it. Sooty mould appears as a dark grey or black ashy coating over leaves and stems. Sooty mould interferes with photosynthesis, so it can weaken plants. Honeydew will also attract ants, which you'll see travelling up and down plant stems.

Chewing insects like caterpillars can rapidly eat through lots of foliage, stems, buds and flowers.

Ornamental shrubs and trees like roses, hibiscus, camellias, azaleas, gardenias and fuchsias, plus annual flowers are susceptible to a range of damaging sucking and chewing insect pests. Vegetables are also prone to a range of insect pests, all eager to destroy your precious home-grown harvest.

Whitefly

Sometimes it’s hard to see which insect pest is causing the damage – so it’s handy to have a spray that'll control a very wide range of pests, both chewing and sucking. Yates Nature’s Way Organic Citrus, Vegie Ornamental Spray will control most common garden insect pests on ornamental plants, fruit trees and vegetables. Pests controlled include aphids, mealybug, caterpillars, thrips, mites and whitefly.

Spray plant foliage thoroughly when you see insects, including up underneath the leaves where they often hide. Respray weekly if required. Yates Nature’s Way Organic Citrus, Vegie Ornamental Spray contains a combination of pyrethrin, an extract from the pyrethrum daisy, and vegetable-derived oil. It's certified for use in organic gardening by BioGro NZ.

Scale

Scale Control

The sweet, sugary sap produced by plants during the spring growth flush is irresistible to sap sucking scale. There are many species of scale, and they can look very different to one another. Most appear as raised bumps on leaves and stems.

Symptoms of a scale infestation include:

Small yellow spots appearing on the upper surface of leaves, which correspond with scale on the underside of the leaf.
Ants running up and down plants. Ants are attracted to the sweet, sticky honeydew that scale excrete.
Sooty mould, a fungus that looks like a dark grey covering of ash over leaves and stems. Sooty mould grows on the honeydew produced by the scale insects.

Scale can be eliminated with regular sprays of Yates Conqueror Spraying Oil. Once the scale insects are gone, there won't be any more honeydew so the ants and sooty mould will also disappear. Dead scale may remain on the plant for a few weeks after spraying, so don't be too concerned if it doesn't seem to disappear immediately.

Yates Conqueror Spraying Oil is certified for use in organic gardening by BioGro NZ, so it's ideal for gardeners who prefer to use organic pest control methods.

Organic Caterpillar Control

Lots of lovely fresh spring growth can attract destructive caterpillars. Even the smallest of caterpillars can chew through mountains of foliage and left unchecked can result in heartbreaking skeletonised leaves and ruined flowers.

Organic gardeners can easily control these hungry caterpillars by spraying vegies, fruit, flowers and shrubs each week with Yates Nature’s Way Organic Citrus, Vegie Ornamental Spray. It contains natural pyrethrin from the pyrethrum daisy, and canola oil, for dual action insect control. Spray leaves thoroughly, including the undersides, as this is where caterpillars often hide.

Yates Nature’s Way Citrus, Vegie & Ornamental Insect Spray is BioGro certified for use in organic gardens, and has only a one day withholding period.