In growing citrus, we also have to pay
attention to
the problems with insects--
and there are
several that do affect the plant pretty
severely.
Most people that grow citrus,
from time to time, have problems with
some of what I would call immobile
ones; those are scale and mealy bug.
Those are usually insects that feed
on the leaves and stems,
that are transmitted either by us, the
gardener, or by nearby plants. They don't
have the ability to travel great
distances
to get on the plant. And then there are
those insects, like
spider mite, which actually can
move through the air, and seem to
affect the foliage of our plants.
Particularly,
when we move our plants from the
outside in the summer; inside in the winter--
we see problems with spider mite.
There are many
ways to control that;
spider mite: simply, it's cold water
sprayed on the entire plant; do it every
day for a week, and that pretty much
eliminates them.
You can also use one of our favorites,
which is
Neem oil;  that's a leaf polisher. Mix
it up, spray it on the entire plant.
That works very well for both mealy bug
and scale, although you have to remember
with those two
insects repeated applications are
necessary, in order to get control.
One application may suppress them and
you'll see them sort of disappear, but
they will--
but trust me, they will be back, if we
don't do repeated applications. And
generally, it's like three or four
applications,
with good penetration of the canopy. So,
that means you need to get a sprayer
that has some force on it, so that you
can get
down into the cracks, into and around the
fruit, into the edges of the leaves, here,
where the insects may be hiding.
