SweetMonkeyCheese! I've missed your contributions. Glad you are back! Yes, I grab the windex for the periodic giant ants on my garage door. They don't like it at all!

dirtygardener73 - Doesn't something that strong harm the leaves on most plants? I have several New Guinea impatiens and a large prayer plant I've been treating for mealy bugs but they keep returning. I even used a strong systemic with no success. Those I sprayed with 50/50 water and alcohol dropped a lot of leaves...... bummer.

greenthumbs2, I've never had them drop leaves from the straight alcohol, but honestly, I've never sprayed the windex concoction on my plants. I'm of the mind that losing a few leaves is not big thing if you can save a plant. I've used the straight alcohol on plants as tender as coleus with no ill effect. I think maybe the plant being weakened by the mealybugs themselves may cause them to lose leaves. I don't spray the entire plant with alcohol, because that wouldn't do any good. It's not a poison and it evaporates rapidlly. You only spray it directly onto the mealybugs, which are usually in the crux of the leaf and plants. I've not found alcohol to be effective on any other pests, though.

dirtygardener73 What I find discouraging is how many insecticides are worthless in that the insects and bugs have almost total resistance unlike years ago. Yet the stores still sell these products. Even the organic products are pretty worthless. One year up in TN we lost the total crop of peppers and tomatoes to spider mites and another year to white fly. Nothing worked. We canned nothing those years.

Well the plant continues to live, yesterday I saw a couple of spots (nothing like the other day) so I sprayed again. I have sprayed just before night fall (right after I get home from work) I figure best time to do it anyway, no worry about a sun + chemical burn.

Not for nothing, but I feel like the organic sprays are like potato chip bags, you spray a little and the bottle is half gone.

If the Windex trick ends up working I might use it more often.

greenthumbs2, yes, that is very frustrating. I'm so sorry about your losing your entire crop! That must have ben maddening. It seems that once spider mites and whitefly take over a plant, you can never get rid of them. I'm fighting a serious infestation of whitefly on my confederate rose. It never had them until I moved it to my roommate's house in Venice. She was 100% organic, and wouldn't allow any chemicals in her yard. The whiteflies must have gotten into the roots or something, because despite letting it die back to the ground and tons of spraying with organics, it still has them three years later. I'm going to give up and hit it with a systemic next year, because I just can't stand watching it suffer like this. I truly hate using anything with the name "Bayer," but I grew this plant almost 20 years from seeds someone here on GW smuggled in from Hawaii sewed into the hem of a dress, so it's very special to me.

As you know, I had no luck with veggies this year, save one particularly stubborn cayenne pepper which has not grown much but hasn't died either, so we'll see what happens next year.

SweetMonkeyCheese I'm so glad it's working for you. Mealybugs are very difficult to get rid of. I do think things are becoming immune to most every commercial chemical available, and I don't know what will happen when there is nothing that works anymore.

dirtygardener73 - The same thing happened with antibiotics. They, like insecticides, were so overused the bacteria became resistant if not immune. There are still insecticides that work but the stores don't sell them. You have to be a farmer and get them through your Ag agent. Yet it's legal for the stores to keep selling totally useless products to home owners.

Losing the entire crop was maddening. Dozens of plants were ripped out, burnt and the ashes buried in an old abandoned flower bed that had also been infested w/whitefly. One year the Japanese beetles almost wiped out an entire 150' row of Crape Myrtles. They resisted everything including being dusted with Diatomaceous earth.

It will be a sad day for humanity when there are no more insecticides, mitacides and fungicides that work. Organic gardening did not work anywhere I lived. The crops were so small I would have had to hire help to plant many times the number of plants I could ordinarily, and to help with the weeding and compost making......

Instead of cutting just about every branch away I just grabbed the Windex.. lol.

Reminds me of the movie, My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

I use a garden hose and a bottle of dish soap...while spraying the affected areas of the plant with the hose, squirt a little soap in the stream. Give it a minute or two to work (go on to another plant), then come back and rinse clean. Easy peasy and keeps most of the nasties under control.

Try using grinded up peppers, lemons, dont peel the lemon skin,and water,strain it,put it in a spray bottle.bottle.i would clean up the bottom of the plant all the smaller growth.growth.good

Here's a chance for me to plug native plants again! They'll attract the right kind of bugs and will often withstand (though not always) various infestations. A few years ago when whiteflies wiped out most ficus benjamina - my backyard vegetable/fruit garden survived unscathed. Both of my neighbors warned me that their yards were infested, but I hardly ever spray, so I waited to see what would happen. There was a spider web in one of my citrus trees that grew so much I thought it might wipe out the tree. But it didn't and the only problem I had was an ugly mess on the underside of the banana leaves. I sprayed them with insecticidal soap a couple of times.

I just did the same thing! The aphids were laughing at me when I sprayed them with Neem oil. This is a last resort.

I have had so many problems with my chokecherry tree and than it spreads to other trees so I got desperate and got the windex out lol

.I will let you know how it went.