I have aphids on my sundew. They started on my Venus fly trap and migrated. I think by some miracle I got rid of them on the Venus fly trap by using alcohol and a qtip. However the sundew seems infested.
I have a bottle of neem oil coming send I was hoping to get both application advice and folks’ experience with it.
Other ideas welcome. Thank you in advance.
I use neem oil on my carnivores, so I’ll give you my two cents:
Apply in the evening when the sun goes down, I’ve burned a couple trumpet pitchers by applying in the afternoon.
Water it down a little more than the instructions call for, then work your way up if it’s not effective at low doses.
I use the “mist” setting on the sprayer first, wait a few minutes, then hit the plants with the “water gun spray” setting. This’ll knock any dead aphids and egg sacks off the plant, and prevent mold or mildew growing on the corpses.
I had the same issue - seems like aphids really like sundews, since none were on the venus flytraps. I just… picked off every aphid, made sure to check under all the leaved and all the nooks and crannies. I managed to eradicate them after a couple passes.
Quick update. I had been q-tipping them off for 2 weeks now. Every day it looked like 5 new adults would show up. I had sphagnum moss as a substrate and perhaps that was acting as an aphids hotel?
Well last night my bottle of cold pressed neem oil came (pre-diluted). I put some in a tiny spray bottle and hit it with about 10 sprays. After 20 minutes about 30 aphids climbed to the highest leaves and we’re dancing around. I wet a q-tip with neem oil and got off as many as I could.
Today I didn’t see a single aphid. Time will tell if got them all, if I’ve done any lasting damage with the neem oil, or if the plant recovers. But I’m hopeful.
Side note: the leaves look so shiny and nice looking. A nice side effect of the neem oil.