Pests in your orchids???

[kiwiorchids]

I am a member of another forum-type thingie on facebook, and an interesting discussion popped up...To date, what is the most devestating pest you have encountered with your orchids?

Im just being curious, as some of the answers to the facebook pole were quite humourous!

[kiwiorchids]

My Cat for sure, she goes all out psycho on a full moon especially. I have learnt to lock her away in a Hannibal style setup before night falls.

[panam]

Somehow this summer I have a battle with mealy bugs. My orchids are all grown inside, in the room that's actually farthest from any door, and the window is never opened, so I can't figure out how they happened in there... My hibiscus outside my front door is also having problems with a mealy bug infestation, so something must have hopped a ride in with me. Keeps me busy, that's for sure.

[King Kjeldz]

in my country it is called Hibiscus mealy bug as they are extremely detrimental to Hibiscus in particular....dey never affect my orchids somehow...i voted rodents and snails/slugs

[cakedaddy]

I have lost plants to scale... But I have to say that chickadees are on the the top of my list of pests at the moment. Strange that some tiny little bird would make me despise it and feed it at the same time! They are pecking holes in a fave dendrobium!
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[stateless]

Aphids and thrips for now, but when I first started growing it was my dogs, they loved the charcoal in the planting mix. One would get up on the bench ,knock over plants, pull them out of the pot and knock the pot on the ground so all 3 could eat the charcoal. I admired their teamwork, but put a stop to it, now they just scrounge the growing area floor for spillage. This is why I don't use pesticides .

[Brutal_Dreamer]

Scale has been pretty awful on cattleyas for us. Sometimes ants too.

cheers,
BD

[catasetum-ian]

got to say snails, i bought one white pileatum with snails in it, i was wondering initially what happened to the new roots until one night i found the culprit. i got to eventually removed the entire media and start the plant all over from bulb division. but that is two years back, so far no problem from those slimy creatures.

[pavel]

Could have used a couple more categories, IMO -- mites, and fungi.

In my terrariums, snails were the biggest issue. Simply could not eradicate the stupid things. Finally tore the terrs down and rebuilt them after doing the best I could to remove all the old media and trying to make sure the new media was a sterile as I reasonable could.

Then there was the one spring in which I lost three or four plants to one of those fungi that seem to start in the roots and sweep through the entire plant in what seems like a matter of days.

Most of the pests mentioned above are rarely a problem for me. Mites, on the other hand, love the dry warm air in my apt -- particularly over the winter.

[Gage]

1. Thrips, these guys are relentless. They tatter the leaves and opening buds, and the tear up my Vanda roots. Only in the past 2 months have my orchids had a break from thrips, since I started applying Orthene.
2. Mites, they have only shown up in bursts a few times on a few plants.

Despite the abundance of scale on nearby trees and the abundance of ants on and around my collection, I have not had any scale problems, but I am always looking.
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