Horticulture Hotline 10/23/17
By Bill Lamson-Scribner
Question: Bill, I have a white, sticky, fuzzy fungus on my
Sweetgrass plant. What can I do? I am retired now and my wife expects me to
help her keep a nice yard when I’m not fishing or emailing my friends.
Answer: Congratulations on your retirement! Good luck with
your fishing!
Your Sweetgrass plant most likely has a soft body, sucking
bug called a mealy bug attacking it. Mealybugs are like aphids, scale, white
flies, the “nasty rascal, the chinch bug”, lace bug and other sucking bugs in
that they suck plant juices or sap from the host plant.
I was surprised when I first saw mealybugs on Sweetgrass. I
usually associate mealybugs with plants grown inside buildings, homes (interior
plantscapes) or greenhouses. I usually think of ornamental grasses as being
pest free – wrong!
As with any sucking bug, you want to get the situation under
control fast, or you will have the secondary problem that looks way worse than
the fuzzy, airy mealybugs. The secondary problem is the dreaded sooty mold.
Sooty mold is the black mold that grows on the excrement
(poop) of certain sucking bugs. Have you ever seen a black gardenia (from white
fly poop) or crepe myrtle (from aphid poop)? Certain insects have a very short
digestive track and they are drinking sap from a plant that is pressurized. The
sap goes in their mouth and out their behind very rapidly covering the plant
with a sugary substance (often called honey dew) that this mold grows.
In human terms, if you could connect your mouth to, let’s
say, a keg of beer or maybe a soft serve ice cream machine at some point the
beer or ice cream would be coming out of somewhere (nose, ears, …) leaving a
mess. Insects have hardly any digestive tract to slow things down.
A very effective way to control these mealybugs, while not
hurting the beneficial insects, is to use an insecticidal soap. Also drench the
area around the Sweetgrass with Dominion.
Dominion is a long term systemic insecticide that will free
you up for more time fishing.
Always read, understand and follow product label. The
product label is a Federal Law.
Visit our website at possumsupply.com.
Bill Lamson-Scribner
can be reached during the week at Possum’s Landscape and Pest Control Supply.
Possum’s has three locations 481
Long Point Rd in Mt. Pleasant
(971-9601), 3325 Business Circle
in North Charleston
(760-2600), or 606 Dupont Rd,
in Charleston
(766-1511). Bring your questions to a Possum’s location, or visit us at
http://www.possumsupply.com. You can also call in your questions to “ The
Garden Clinic”, Saturdays from noon to 1:00, on 1250 WTMA (The Big Talker).
