Plants, Pest, Disease and Human

Plants, Pest, Disease and Human

To understand how plant get disease I will write this post relating to how human react when met with the similar scenario. Plant is similar to humans, when they are healthy they can defend themselves against virus or illness. What they cannot defend is the pest attack and thru these attacks they will suffer more.

Different Pest

Pest attack healthy plant mainly for food. In the process of these attack they result damage to the plant and cause the plant to malfunction. I will only be exploring on the more common pest.

First of all pest that feed on the leaves. These pests are mainly caterpillars, beetles, grasshoppers and snails. Without the leaves plant are unable to carry out the process of photosynthesis. Imagine a human prolong under serious toothache, we cant eat to replenish ourselves with nutrient and energy. Naturally our body will become very weak and thus lowering our immune system. Lose of food and prolong under this condition will cause the plant to have malnutrition also. When malnutrition occurs, the growth will be stagnate but if the attack from pest is not stopped, the condition of the plant will deteriorate further and eventually it will wilt.

Second is pest that feed on the plant juice, These pest are mainly scale insects, mealybugs, whitefiles, aphid and spider mites. These insect are generally small, about the size of 1mm to about 4mm, they come in large quantity. They suck out the juice from the plant. Imagine a human going thru a series of blood test/ blood donation, numerals times of needle poking and sucking the blood out make a human weak. Only the replenishment is faster then the output the body will be able to maintain the healthy state. The same goes to the plant without water soon the plant will lose it rigidity. Without enough resource to support the plant, it will abandon the leaves first and the symptom is yellowing of leaves, wilt or deformed and finally fall off.

The next problem that some of these insect after they feed, they excrete a sugary rich substance call honeydew, these honeydew attract ants and also will leads to a fungus growth which is call sooty mold. This mold is not harmful but when the growth on the big surface or majority of leaves, it prevent the plant to breath and photosynthesis and this will cause big damage to the plant.

Ways to stop these Pest

Caterpillars, Beetles, Snails and Grasshoppers are bigger and easily visible to human eyes, most simple and effective ways is to remove them by hand and dispose to a garbage bag. When some of the crawler travel around the plants, they leave trails. Follow the trail and you might find some. There are snail pills which can be use to eliminate snail, check out the nursery/garden for different types of snail pills and application.

Scale insects, Mealybugs, Whitefiles, Aphid and Spider Mite are smaller but their appearance are normally indicated by different color or symptom. All can be treated with soapy water and pesticide. Do read the pesticide label for direction on usage.

Scale insect
White color when young turn brown when matured. The body size is small and normally come in round shape. They attached themselves to the stem and leaves. To remove, use any sharp and long object to scrape it off.

Mealybugs
White or pinkish in color, crawling insect with long body. product a web like structure can be seen at the stem. Same treatment as scale insect. scrape it off with any sharp and long object.

Whitefiles
As the name suggest is white and as small as baby files. Hardly visible thus hard to treat. Use pesticide if need be, if the condition is beyond control, prune the affected areas, or worst case dispose it before it spread to other plants.

Aphids
Green or black in color, have a soft and oval shape body. Usually found under the leaves, flower buds and shoots. Rub them off as soon as discovered.

Spider mites
White, yellow and red in color. Very small and hardly visible, normally hide under the leaves. Prune the affect leaves is the best method to remove spider mite.

Fungi

The sooty mold produce by the honeydew is a kind of fungi attack. Stop the pest attack and the source of the mold will stop. The soot can be wiped off to stop the growth of the fungi.

Prevention is always better the cure. Provide your plant with a good and healthy growing environment can reduce a lot of the unwanted attacks. Care and regular inspection is the key to a healthy plant.