Our orange tree is invested with woolly whitefly. It's disgusting and I hate it. This photo shows what woolly whitefly does to the leaves of the orange tree. I also have nasty photos of the white fluffy goop that's also globbed all over the green baby oranges. But those are especially yucky, so I thought I'd spare you. The amount of whitefly yuck seemed to come and go over time. I'm sure it probably has something to do with the season. But every time I would see an improvement I would think that the problem was going away. What can I say? I can be a master of denial sometimes. I'd heard that using a soap solution could take care of the problem. But what kind of soap was I supposed to use? And how was I supposed to apply it to the tree? How long would it take to work? I tried looking around online a bit, but finally just decided to ask the San Diego Master Gardeners. Apparently, the woolly stuff is the egg casings from the whitefly larvae. There are lots of beneficial insects that prey on whitefly - but those beneficial insects are often chased off and/or killed by ants. There are tons of ants in our orange trees! Apparently, the whitefly suck sap (or whatever it is they eat) from the orange tree, and excrete this stuff called "honeydew." It has a lot of sugar in it that the whitefly get from the tree but cannot digest. The sugar attracts the ants. The ants kill the insects that eat whitefly. So the ant and whitefly have a good thing going, I guess. But I am determined to stop this vicious cycle. The Master Gardeners suggested I use ant bait to get the ants out of the tree. Then they told me the type of soap I needed (a special insecticidal type) and to use a garden sprayer to coat the tree and leaves with it. The soap will kill the whitefly, but won't harm most of the beneficial insects. They also said that it would be good to prune the tree first to open it up so that the soap would get to all the leaves. Because I work all week and can't get to the nursery to look for insecticidal soap, I just went to Amazon and purchased both the soap and a garden sprayer. They arrived a couple days ago, so I'm ready to get to work tomorrow! I'm hoping it will get rid of the whitefly problem and ensure lots of big, healthy oranges for us in the coming year.
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