How to get rid of a whitefly in a greenhouse on cucumbers: the most effective methods of control and prevention

Cucumbers are often exposed pest attacks... The succulent leaves of this culture attract various insects. One of them is the whitefly, or white midge.

Whitefly in a greenhouse on cucumbers is a common problem for gardeners and gardeners. What to do, how to get rid of it? Let's figure it out together.

What is this pest

Whitefly, or white midge, is a dangerous pest... The insect feeds on plant sap and multiplies very quickly. The whitefly and its larvae usually settle on the underside of the leaf.

Often the insect appears in greenhouses, as it loves a warm and humid climate. Dwells on plants in groups.

Appearance

Whiteflies (pictured) are small, mole-like insects with milky white wings and a white or yellow body. In length they reach no more than 3 mm. They have 4 wings, covered with a white bloom resembling flour.

Whitefly larvae are small, up to 0.3 mm in size. They look like translucent yellow scales. Having hatched from an egg, they attach to the leaf and begin to actively feed on its juice.

Later comes the pupal stage. At this time, the larva is maximally resistant to various drugs. Then an adult with wings appears from the pupa, which is able to fly to other plants and reproduce.

Symptoms of the defeat of cucumbers

Due to the fact that whiteflies live on the underside of leaves, they may not be noticed immediately. It is necessary to systematically examine the cucumbers and know the signs by which whitefly infection is determined:

• the surface of the stems and leaves becomes sticky, covered with a white bloom;
• the leaves curl up, fade, fade;
• yellow or green spots with blurred borders appear on the leaves;
• larvae are visible on the inside of the leaf;
• over time, a black bloom appears - a sooty fungus (such an infected plant is dug up and burned);
• the development of the vegetable slows down noticeably, the yield decreases;
• if you shake cucumbers, a swarm of white midges rises into the air - these are whiteflies.

If at least one of the listed signs is found, it is necessary to urgently take measures to combat the pest.

Harm done

Since the insect feeds on plant juices, the affected cucumbers begin to lag behind healthy ones.... Their leaves dry up and fall off over time, and later the whole culture withers.

Due to the lack of fluid, the ovaries cannot fill and fully ripen. This leads to a sharp decrease in yield.

The white midge carries diseases such as jaundice, yellow mosaic, chlorosis, curly foliage and fruit necrosis. In places where the whitefly drank juice and left its excess, chlorophyll does not form and various pathogenic microorganisms develop.

How to deal with whitefly on cucumbers in a greenhouse

As soon as you notice the first signs of pests appearing in the greenhouse, immediately take measures to destroy them.... To get started, try mechanical methods for removing whiteflies from a bush:

1. Collect the insect by hand with a sponge and soapy water.
2. Remove and burn the leaves on which the larvae have settled. It makes sense to remove the leaves if the plant is slightly damaged. If the whitefly has occupied more than 40% of the cucumbers, this method will not work.
3. Rinse insects off the bush with a strong pressure of water from a hose, and then treat the leaves with soapy water.
4. Collect adult insects with a hand-held vacuum cleaner.

These are only temporary measures that are not able to destroy insects completely, but can significantly reduce their number before further struggle.

There are a variety of ways to combat the whitefly: mechanical traps, folk methods, biological agents and chemicals.

It is better to get rid of insects with the help of chemicals at the last moment, if the other tested means did not give the desired result.

Mechanical traps

Whitefly traps can be bought at specialized stores or made by hand:

1. Paint the plastic bottle orange, cover the outside with a layer of sticky glue or a mixture of petroleum jelly and laundry soap (1: 1). Make a backlight from the inside and hang in the greenhouse at the level of growth of cucumber bushes. The midges will fly into the light and stick to the surface of the trap.
2. In a small wooden box, hold a light bulb with red or orange light (or paint a regular light bulb). Hang the structure in the greenhouse, put a container of water under it. Whiteflies will fly into the light, burn themselves against a light bulb and fall into the water.

reference... Such traps are capable of exterminating up to 80% of adult pests in the greenhouse.

Traditional methods

Gardeners who are faced with a whitefly on cucumbers are always interested in how to treat plants from a pest without resorting to chemicals. For such purposes, there are folk recipes against white midges:

1. Soap solution... To sprinkle and wipe the leaves, use laundry or tar soap. It is mixed with water in a 6: 1 ratio.
2. Sugar solution. Dissolve 100 g of sugar in 400 ml of water. The mixture is treated with infected leaves. If the remedy does not help the first time, the procedure is repeated after a week. 5 days after treatment, the leaves are thoroughly washed from the sugar film.
3. Lemon infusion... 100 g of lemon peels are poured into 1 liter of water for 24 hours. Add 60 g of soap. After that, the infected leaves are sprayed with a solution from a spray bottle.
4. Garlic infusion... Finely chop 300 g of garlic cloves and fill them with 1 liter of water. Insist in a dark place for 5 days. Then 5 g of the resulting solution is again diluted in 1 liter of pure water. Spraying is carried out using a spray bottle.
5. Dandelion infusion... 80 g of dandelion leaves and roots are poured with 1 liter of water and infused for about 4 hours. After that, the solution is filtered and the infected leaves are sprayed with it.
6. Infusion of yarrow. In 1 liter of water, add 100 g of yarrow herb, insist for 2 days in a dark place. After that, the infusion is filtered and the beds with cucumbers are treated with it.

Biological agents

An interesting biological way of exterminating the whitefly is to include other insects in the fight against it. In nature, white midges and their larvae are hunted by, for example, ladybugs and lacewing. To attract them, marigolds are planted next to cucumbers.

There is also an insect in nature that parasitizes the whitefly larvae. This is encarzia - a rider from the order of Hymenoptera. She lays her eggs directly into the larvae of the white midge, thereby destroying them. Insects are settled in the greenhouse at the rate of 20 individuals per 1 m2.

Important! The villi on the leaves of the cucumbers prevent the encarsia from reaching the whitefly larvae, so this method may not work in full force on this particular crop.

Biological preparation "Verticillin" contains a fungus that can kill both larvae and adults of the whitefly. At the same time, it does not harm the plant, animals and humans. The preparation Fitoverm will also help in the fight against the pest.

Chemicals

If the previous methods did not help, or the whitefly infection has reached a significant extent, you will have to resort to chemical means.

The most effective whitefly insecticides include:

1. «Actellic". Sold in ampoules. The contents of one ampoule (2 ml) are dissolved in 2 liters of water and sprayed. Up to 2 treatments are allowed. The protective effect in the greenhouse is 10–12 days.
2. «Arrivo".Consumption rate: 1.5 ml per 10 liters of water. The protective effect is 10-14 days.
3. "Bona Forte"(Insecticide). The contents of the ampoule (2 ml) are dissolved in 0.5 l of water. Valid for 2-3 weeks.
4. "Inta-Vir"... 1 tablet in 10 liters of water. Up to 3 treatments.
5. «Spark". First, ½ tablet is completely dissolved in a little water, then diluted with water to 5 liters. Re-spraying is possible after 20 days.
6. «Confidor". 1 ml for 5-10 liters of water. The protective effect is 15-30 days.
7. «Talstar". 0.6 ml per 1 liter of water. Protects the crop for 2-3 weeks.
8. «Tanrek". 5 ml for 10 liters of water. 1 liter of liquid is poured into a plastic bucket, 5 ml of the drug is added, mixed, diluted to 10 liters. The effect lasts up to 4 weeks.
9. «Fas"(Insecticide). ½ tablet for 5 liters of water. The interval between treatments is 15–20 days.
10. «Fufanon". 13 ml per 10 liters of water. The protective effect is 5-10 days.

It is possible to eat fruits after processing cucumbers with chemicals only after a month. In the case of biological products - after 2-3 days. Diluted chemicals cannot be stored.

Important! Use a respirator for chemical treatment. Make sure that the drug does not come into contact with exposed skin. Throw away gloves after use. Wash hands, face and eyes with soap.

Most insecticides repel all insects, including bees, so they should not be used on cucumbers during flowering.

Features of wrestling in open ground

In the open field, whitefly infection occurs most often through seedlings. Before planting, carefully inspect the seedlings for insects or signs of their presence.

For the prevention of infection of cucumbers in the garden or plot, the "Bud" agent is suitable. Dissolve 10 g of the product in 10 liters of water and spray the vegetables every 10 days.

If whitefly is found on cucumbers outdoors, first rinse it off with water and loosen the top 2 cm of soil. Then treat the plant several times with soapy water and insecticide. Iskra is well suited for these purposes.

Spraying is carried out in dry, calm weather, in the morning (before 10:00) or in the evening (after 18:00), when the plants are not threatened with sunburn.

Preventive measures

To prevent whitefly from appearing on cucumbers in a greenhouse, a number of rules should be followed:

1. Use traps. A bright surface will attract insects, while a sticky surface will prevent them from escaping.
2. Experienced gardeners advise using the "Bud" remedy for prevention.
3. Examine the seedlings carefully before planting in the ground. Purchase seedlings only from trusted producers. Check the leaves before purchasing.
4. After harvesting, carefully dig up the soil, remove all plant residues and debris.
5. Treat the ground with bleach or copper sulfate. Fumigate the greenhouse with tobacco smoke. Spray frames with Bordeaux liquid.
6. Freeze the greenhouse in winter: open it for 1-2 days when the temperature drops below -12 ... -15 ° С. In such conditions, insects die.
7. Do not plant very densely and avoid extreme heat and humidity in the greenhouse. You can pull a gauze mesh over the vents in the greenhouse.

Do not be lazy to carry out prevention, and then the whitefly will not be scary for your cucumbers.

Reviews

All these methods have been repeatedly tested by gardeners who have at least once entered into a fight with the whitefly. Not every method bears fruit, and sometimes new solutions appear, unexpectedly leading to victory.

Galina, Kazan: «And if you treat a greenhouse with a sulfur saber? Every autumn I light 3 checkers at the same time (I have a large greenhouse). And in the summer in the greenhouse I make tobacco smoke - it does not harm the plants, but the effect is excellent! There are no whiteflies ... "

Tatiana, Voronezh region: "Last year I was in the greenhouse in the summer, I could not destroy it. In the winter I kept the greenhouse without snow, I threw snow only in February. This summer I did not observe in the greenhouse. So it's not all that bad. "

Natalia, Perm: “I only had a whitefly in the first year of my gardening.Then she began to hang up vials of iodine - there are no pests and phytophthora. "

Margarita, Tyumen: "Militantly tuned in for the summer of 2018! I have been on the warpath since autumn! First of all, I treated the sick (and not only) the bushes with closed doors. The next day I dug up all the bushes, took them far beyond the site and burned them! I dug up the ridges when it became cold, and did not cover them with snow. I wanted to freeze this muck, but it's not in vain that they say - be afraid of your desires! The winter was a fierce one: snow fell 10-15 centimeters during the whole winter, and frosts were below -50! Not only the whitefly froze - 90% of the perennial flowers, almost all the vegetables in the cellar. So I won this war at the cost of great losses, but there was no whitefly in my greenhouse in the summer of 2018! "

Yuri, Chelyabinsk: “I fought for six months, everything was useless, nothing helps. Fumigator (liquid "Transflutrin") unexpectedly helped. All flying died in a day. It does not work on larvae and eggs, you need to wait until the butterflies hatch. We close the greenhouse tightly, turn on the fumigator in the evening (at night), turn it off in the morning, repeat it every other day, and so on for a month (preferably two). The effect is 100%. "

Read also:

How to cook pickled cucumbers in a bag quickly and tasty.

Why cucumbers are bitter, how to prevent it and what to do with the crop.

How to prepare delicious pickled cucumbers with grape vinegar.

Conclusion

Getting rid of a whitefly is a laborious process. When infected, it is important to start fighting it as early as possible. This insect reproduces at high speed, and when it fills the entire site or greenhouse, it is simply impossible to get rid of it.

When working with chemicals, be sure to read the instructions, follow them carefully and take precautions. Do not neglect whitefly preventive measures. This is the easiest way to save the harvest. Don't wait for small bugs to appear on the cucumbers.