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Help! How can I save my orchid? She has many white little critters on… | Pests, diseases and problems | Planta community

Sofie

Help! How can I save my orchid? She has many white little critters on her, (i got rid of them about 6 months ago but they can back) and her roots don’t seem in the best shape… How do l know which ones to save and which ones to cut? I’m too scared i’m going to leave her with no roots! Some of the roots are brown towards the middle but have little white new roots coming out of them.. do I save those? Most of them seem half-dead… shriveled at the bottom but still plump at the top. Any way I can save her?

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  1. V

    your orchid has a really severe case of mealy bugs :( if you absolutely cannot part ways with it (this is the easiest way to get rid of the bugs and not infect your other plants), then here’s what you can do! -there are special treatments that you can buy for mealies, but if you don’t have any on hand, rubbing alcohol, dawn dish soap, and warm water can also do the trick! typically i would say to use a q tip soaked in rubbing alcohol to kill the individual bugs but since you have so many you can creat a sort of “bug bath”. -before the bug bath, spray down your entire orchid (roots included) with running water. try to get off all the bugs you can see. once that’s done, grab some sort of container and fill it with a combination of warm water, dish soap, and a bit of rubbing alcohol. dunk the entire plant in the container and gentle bathe it -after a few minutes of that you can dump the water and rinse off the plant (repeat if necessary). if you still see some stray bugs, use the q tip and alcohol method — it kills the bugs on contact. -sanitize anything that came in contact with the plant (container, pot, shears, etc.) so nothing spreads. you can repot with new bark (or whatever your preferred medium is) and quarantine for at least two weeks to make sure they’re really gone. as for the roots, i would take a pair of sanitized shears and cut of everything that’s brown and mushy, even if there are new roots growing from them. don’t be nervous about this; plants are super resilient!! i hope this helped. if you have any other questions, let me know!

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    • Sofie

      Thank you so much, this really helped! I’ll let you know how it goes!

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