Gardening help?

[emperor]

A while ago, we acquired a basil plant from Tesco. Remarkably, they hadn't destroyed its roots, so it lived. Accordingly, we potted it up, and put it in the newly-sorted-out greenhouse. It did well for a bit, but not it's infested with whitefly, which look to be killing it :-(

What should I do about this? I know the basil won't survive the winter, so I'm more worried about protecting the chilli plant (the only other thing in the greenhouse, and my Favourite Plant). OTOH, it would be nice to have healthy basil again. I have no qualms about deploying chemical warfare...

Comments

[arnhem.livejournal.com]

This is what we did with soap scraps when I was young, and worked very well.

I've found a very low cost, low maintenance way of doing this (as I didn't have a proper spray device).

Take a nearly empty washing-up-liquid bottle (when it's reached the point that it's too annoying to try to get any more out of it). 1/2 fill with
water and shake like mad until the other half is completely foamy. Now, with the bottle mostly-upright, squirt gently, such that a huge flume of soapy bubbles emerge.

With a little practice, you can pretty much cover all the infested surfaces with bubbly-detergent-foam. Do this a few times, and the green/white/black-fly just disappear.

Next time you need to use it, just shake like mad again. Occasionally it may need topping up with a bit of water.

Remember to keep it mostly-upright, even when getting at awkward bits.

[emperor]

This, I realise, is the down-side of having a washing-up-liquid bottle we refil from a big 5l thing we got from Daily Bread years ago!