Rugose Spiraling Whitefly sure has made its mark on southwest Florida. Many of you either had your trees treated or have seen your neighbors trees turn a funny color blue. This method of treatment is a trunk spray which has been very successful and does not require drilling holes into the trees. We also are inoculating trees with insecticides. This method seems a bit more invasive but the results have been PERFECT!
November of last year, we began aggressively treating the new invader. Since then we have been investigating characteristics of this new pest, attending seminars, tracking our treatments for product effectiveness and speaking with other professionals regarding their findings.
We now have approximately 100 different trees with the Spiral Whitefly. But don’t let this alarm you. Initially, we were very concerned that this was going to be a landscaping nightmare, and we were treating everything that showed symptoms. Now, with some experience under our belts, we are concerned but not afraid of losing our landscape investments.
The 2 main palm trees on the Spiral Whitefly’s Most Wanted List is the Coconut Palm and the Adonidia Palm. Everyone knows the Coconut Palm but other names for the Adonidia Palm are Dwarf Royal and Christmas Palm. The preferred trees of the Spiral Whitefly are the Gumbo-Limbo, Black Olive and the Ficus family of trees.
With hundreds of trees now treated and thousands on our “watch list”, have gained significant knowledge. Right now, if you see Spiral Whitefly on anyof the Spiral Whitefly’s Most Wanted Listthey are only going to get worse and they need to be treated! If you notice it in other types of trees or palms, give us a call and we’ll stop by to examine it and advise you.
Because of the Whitefly, we have purchased new equipment to deal with the problem. Our inoculation equipment has been 100% effective at eliminating the target pests and does so in a matter of hours. We also discovered different chemistry that allow us to apply fertilizers using this method.
For some of those risky staining areas in the pool cages or interior landscape areas, we can inject the trees with food for a 6 month period. We also are using specially formulated fungicides that move rapidly through the tree so results are evident in only a few days.