Hello everyone my name is Corbin and this is Plant Basics. Today I'm going
to talk to you about how to get rid of scale and mealybugs on an Anthurium
using surgical alcohol. So this plant is Anthurium
Pulchurm I think, with
these beautiful big leaves, I'll put the right name on the video because I just think
that I butchered that pronunciation but anyway. This plant is filled with scale and mealybugs
and it has honeydew on it which is an absolute giveaway of scale insects. This is
spirits which is in a spray bottle so the first thing I'm going to do is spray this plant
and this will really just help kill off any of the scale because alcohol evaporates
really quickly so it completely dries out the scale as it drives yeah as the alcohol dries
I mean. The next thing I'm going to do of course is to use these makeup removers and I'm going to
wipe off all of the scale from this plant now I know that this could seem like a tedious task
but really it's imperative to remove all of the scale and mealybugs including the crawlers
or whatever else could be on your plant so I'm going to actually start with the stems and just
put it like that with my fingers and just simply go in in the direction of the leaves and to really
just take off anything that's on the stems of the plant I detest... there's nothing I detest
more than scale insects well perhaps spider mites but I think scale is just the worst thing
The stems are so full of that honeydew it's just disgusting actually
so you just like move it up and down to get them all off like whatever there and also this
bottom one I'm just going to give this a last wipe. Actually what I'm going to do is
just spray it on. So I'm just going to give this the last little spray and put some alcohol on
the pad and just do this again and it's very important to also look behind any of the leaves
I know with Cattleyas you call these sheaths but because this is the perfect place for
mealybugs to go and hide on your plants Mealybug and scale actually love to get into
all the little crevices of your plants and its from here that they usually launch their attack.
now I'm going to start with the leaves so I'm just going to spray this again.
We're going to wipe the front of the leaves
they love to sit in the little veins and just start with their
sucking because what they do is they literally
suck all the energy from your plant and they produce this horrid honeydew
substance which is just the worst thing in the world but the great thing about Anthuriums and doing
this is that the leaves are extremely easy to handle so it's not as if you can easily damage
your plant you still need to also be careful but yeah it's really easy to handle and it's easy to see
them also because it's extremely important that you are able to see where they are.
Can you imagine having to clean off scale that's on a Maiden Hair fern.
Where they usually love to sit on the back of the leaves. The plant produces the honeydew
because the scale insect is feeding on it and that honeydew is meant to attract
ants and the ants are meant to ward off the natural predators of the scale it has no choice
it's almost like the scale is forcing the plant to produce the honeydew if that makes sense
the other thing I just want to say is that don't you use this with every plant because
I've noticed on plants such as ferns because this has a tendency to chill, it chills the leaves of plants
because when you apply it, it feels really cold and I've noticed that
on more delicate leaves like ferns or Calatheas possibly it turns the leaf
brown but with Anthuriums and Philodendrons and Orchids I haven't seen that it does that.
So just be careful of that, that you don't for instance use it on your ferns
It's such a beautiful plant, now that I look at it again, I love the leaves.
It's not a flowering Anthurium... well it produces flowers obviously but it doesn't have a showy flower It's more grown for the leaves I'm told that these leaves can actually grow
quite large but my plant is still quite small so we'll see what happens but I do like this Anthurium.
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