Orchid pests can be hazardous to your plants health...

Top: Sow Bug; Red Spider; Cockroach; Scale

Center: Thrip; Mealy Bug; Dendrobium Beetle; Aphids

Bottom: Snail; Slug; Cattleya Fly; Orchid Weevil

Unlike many garden plants, orchids have few native pests. The high altitudes at which most orchids grow, their preference for living in trees, and their usually leathery leaves and thick stems make them an undesirable diet for predatory insects. Only two native pests, the cattleya fly and the orchid weevil, may become dangerous, but they are largely limited to a few areas on the East Coast and the San Francisco Bay region.

However, orchids in culture have been attacked by some of our home-grown garden pests—scale, aphids, and others of their ilk. Most of the time these common pests are negligible. Yet a single snail, slug, or cockroach can do grave damage in a few hours. Your battle with them can be long and deadly. Slugs, particularly, have developed persistent and voracious appetites for tender new orchid shoots, buds, and flowers.

Natural & Organic Pest Control

The wisest approach to the control of orchid pests is to remember that if your orchids are attacked by insects it will be primarily your fault. Too much water, poor drain-age, or not enough ventilation are cultural evils which will weaken orchids and make them easy prey for pests. Cleanliness, you might say, is next to "orchidliness." Keep your plants and their surroundings clean and you will have little or no insect trouble. Scum or algae accumulations on pots are breeding places for minute pests. Pick up refuse, paper, and leaves left near the plants. Insects don't like to crawl across gravel or cinders, and a bit of paper or a leaf makes their journey to your plants much easier.

Keep ants away from orchids! LandscapeUSA.com Visit this link to get your supplies. Ants carry aphids, mealy bugs, and scale. No ants, no pests, is the rule to be followed here. Buy a suitable ant poison. Keep some in the orchid window or case; put more in the kitchen, where ants tend to congregate, and more outdoors where they come from. Stop them before they reach your orchid collection. This may sometimes be a bit difficult unless you isolate orchids over saucers of water, or isolate orchid benches from floors and walls. While in bud and flower, orchids secrete a sweet honey that ants find irresistible. The honey forms in drops at the base of the flower. Taste it; you'll be amazed how good it is.

If you do get scale or aphids on your plants, the cure is simple if you act in time. Never put off combating pests until tomorrow. They multiply so fast that what would be a few moments' work today will take hours later on. Aphids can be brushed off with a moist soft cloth, or killed with a repellent spray. Scale succumbs to the same treatment. If the scale infestation is unusually heavy, dip a soft toothbrush into the repellent solution and scrub the plants. Get down into the nooks and crannies at the base of the rhizome. That's where scale breeds, gathering strength for a sudden eruption up the stem.

Flower Insect & Pest Control

Thrips and red spider aren't much of a problem—if the cultural conditions under which your orchids are grown are correct. You may not see them—they are very small. Their presence is indicated by the damage they do: many minute white scar-like marks on the underside of leaves, buds, and flowers. Thrips like dry, hot conditions, not the moist atmosphere which orchids require. When you have thrips, merely increase your humidity. The same remedy is good for red spider, although a gentle spray of water often will knock them off the foliage. Once off the plant, they usually don't get back.

Mealy bug infestations on the more tender and succulent types of orchids may become serious. Luckily the colonies spread rather slowly and are usually noticed in time to stop them. They hide beneath the rhizomes, under the leaves, and in the axils of leaves and stems. A toothbrush scrubbing with repellent or a thorough spraying which forces them into the sheltered areas and under the dead tissues will stop mealy bugs cold.

A word of warning at this point. When using nicotine sprays, and they are the most widely used for orchids, never let the spray get on flowers and buds. Both water and the chemical will spot them badly, ruining them for further decorative use. Nothing has been said as yet about oil sprays which, unfortunately, are somewhat dangerous to use and have not been adapted widely to orchids. The difficulty lies in the oil that is used. Mineral oils—those from petroleum products—in concentrations heavy enough to stop pests, particularly scale, clog the stomata of orchids and the plants may eventually die. On the other hand, insecticides using a vegetable oil base have proved of considerable value.

The truly serious pests, however, are slugs, snails, cockroaches, and sow bugs. The damage they can do is tremendous. One baby slug can cut down a small shoot, demolish a bud, or eat the heart out of a flower in one night. With these insect foragers the rule is watchfulness and prevention. There is no cure for the damage they do. Once new growth is topped, it probably won't develop; if it does, it probably won't bloom. Once a flower is ruined, you might as well throw it away.

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Click here for orchid pests part 2.