Soooooo. I was so proud that I could say I haven’t experienced any pests since getting into plants in 2020. I always rolled my eyes at the “you’ll get pests eventually if you haven’t gotten pests already” comments and felt so gleeful I hadn’t had any.

Oh boy.

The pride goeth before a fall usually but in my case it wasn’t so. Cue Jan 8th…..

I was watering and checking out my Even Steven succulent and I saw this white fuzz in the middle of a cluster of leaves. At first I was like it’s just dust. I really needed to dust these guys but then my gut said to pull out the camera and zoom in…..

Hello there. Mealybug greeted me. I felt like the rug was pulled out from under me and I felt sick…..

When I say I panicked. I full out panicked. I repeated “no, no, no” for 5 minutes as I stared at the plant. Mr. Wolf who was working on his app with AirPods in looked at me with concern and rushed over, ahahaha.

My main concern was my rainbow hedgehog cactus but I didn’t see any on it and neither did my husband. I quickly moved all my succulents away from the cactus.

So far only 8 plants had active mealybugs but that didn’t mean the others didn’t have anything on them, just not visible yet. I treated everything in the bathroom with 70% isopropyl alcohol and a preventive pest spray (not at the same time!)

I sprayed them so much in my panic I actually rotted the avonia immediately; although, to be fair, I think it was already starting to go from what the roots looked like when I chucked it into the trash can.

It’s now April and I’m still battling mealybugs on 3 plants and I lost 4, one is propping right now. I haven’t seen any pests on my regular houseplants thank goodness. I was so frightened that they would get to my peace lily but nothing so far, knock on wood.

I got so frustrated by mid March that I bought systemic pest spray and granules and have been using those now and it seems to be going much better than the rubbing alcohol. I will say it its defense that I wasn’t consistent on using the rubbing alcohol so it might have worked out just fine, but I definitely wasn’t on top of things, and now I am nervous I’m going to lose my aeonium kiwis so systemic insecticide it is. None of my plants go outside so I don’t have to worry about killing bees and other friendly bugs.

With the mealybugs not spreading to my regular houseplants yet and its been three months, I think they’re pretty content with the succulents and/or prefer them over the others which would collaborate what I’ve read in the plant community. So I’m not prideful anymore….I’ve learned my lesson. Just hoping to kill these guys soon but I’ll take them over thrips or aphids any day, those sound worse.

Dumb mealybugs. They took four of my plants and my pride.