Tag: bad bugs

Pros and Cons of Roselle Hibiscus Gardening

After growing Roselle Hibiscus for a year, I have decided that one plant is enough for me.

This was my first year growing Roselle hibiscus. I was very happy to have bushy, big plants that would give me lots of tea to drink. But there are problems with this plant.

Growing Roselle was an experiment. I didn’t know much about it, but the tea is good for the heart, blood pressure and other things. It is grown for the red pods, called calyces that form after flowering. They are peeled, and the red petals are used for tea. The tea is delicious and healthy. The center of the pod is where the seeds form. Where I live, the bush is very easy to grow. I had no idea how much Roselle would love my yard. It took over.

Pros

Roselle is one of the easiest things I have ever grown. Plant seeds, or simply cut a small branch from an existing plant and stick it into the ground. It will grow! The plants are beautiful, with big dark green leaves. The flowers don’t last long, but new ones bloom every day – in the Fall. Then it’s time for saving the calyces to have tea in the months to come. I simply peel and freeze mine – if I can pick them before the ants come.

Cons

The beautiful bushes are not very strong. Strong wind catches the leaves and the whole bush will split down to the ground. Or, branches will break off. I lost one of my biggest bushes over the summer during a storm. Then Hurricane Helene damaged the others.

Pathway blocked by shrubs
Beautiful shrub!

Roselle shrubs are huge. In a year they grew taller than me. They took over, blocked sun to parts of the gardens, and made navigating my yard more difficult. I didn’t know, and now I do.

These problems are manageable, and it’s all part of gardening. What I really don’t like about the Roselle is the ants. Once the red calyces began forming, ants were all over them. Maybe I have an excessive amount of ants in my yard, or maybe this is normal, I don’t know. No one warned me of this.

Also, inside each calyx are mealybugs – little white things. It just wasn’t worth the trouble to save these pods.

Roselle Hibiscus calyx covered in ants.
Covered in ants
Inside roselle flower with white mealybugs
Mealybugs inside

I have rinsed, set outside in the sun, rinsed again. The ants were everywhere. It was so bad, in this last batch of roselle I picked, that I gave up and threw them into the woods. It is possible the mealybugs cause the ants to come. I know ants show up when aphids appear too.

I did get an early set of pods, which had many fewer ants. I managed to clean and freeze those without much problem.

Another thing that is annoying is the flowers that drop become mushy and stick to my shoes. They make a mess. I’m certainly not a neat freak, but it feels like dog poop stuck to my crocs.

If I had lots of land, I would grow Roselle in a big area away from the house. They could expand and do their thing without getting in the way. Dropped flowers would be wiped from my shoes before I got back to the house. But this is not the situation I have.

One Roselle Hibiscus plant is enough for me. I’m going to cut them all down except one. Many broke and fell due to Hurricane Helene, so I’m already in the process of removing them. It is possible they will die over the winter anyway.

Solution

It is possible that my yard is not yet balanced with beneficial bugs to clean up this mess. I rarely see ladybugs. Even though I’ve had aphids on a number of plants, the ladybugs don’t stick around.

I read somewhere that it might take a few years to bring the beneficials to a garden, so I’m hopeful things will improve over time.

Read the blog…

Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.

Giant Whiteflies Leave Long White Fur on Hibiscus Leaves

Found fuzzy white infestation of aphids and white flies on my hibiscus plant.

After writing a recent post about finding aphids on my pepper plant, I realized that I need to be vigilant about accidentally removing ladybug larvae and eggs.  One plant that is sure to have aphids in the hibiscus.  It is not unusual to find them all over the buds and new growth.

I haven’t paid much attention to my orange hibiscus plant over the winter, and imagine my surprise (and disgust) to find not only aphids, but long, white fur on the leaves! I don’t know what else to call it, but fur. It’s long enough to blow in the breeze and is attached to the underside of some of the leaves.

Screen Shot 2018-03-26 at 12.02.40 PM

Beneath all that “fur” is a colony whitefly eggs and nymphs. How do I know this? I finally found a super helpful page at Hidden Valley Hibiscus, which talks about this exact type of manifestation, which comes from a southern whitefly called the “Giant Whitefly“. Here is how they describe the fur, “After hatching, the nymphs produce long, hairlike filaments of wax up to 2 inches long that give a bearded appearance to affected leaves.” Exactly, little white beards attached to sticky leaves.

It was not easy to get these photos. Any time I touched a leaf with white, little moths or something flew off. Also the leaves were very sticky. It was pretty gross.

This will never happen to your hibiscus if you are vigilant about checking for unwanted bugs. Whiteflies can be sprayed off with water, just like aphids.

The majority of the white fur was on the stems at the back of the plant.  A secluded, less windy spot seems to be the preference for this type of infestation.

Screen Shot 2018-03-26 at 12.49.25 PM

I plan to cut off the nasty stems from the back of the plant, and maybe spray off the rest. But I will keep an eye on all that ladybug larvae because I don’t want to disturb them.

Ladybugs are wonderful to have, but they need something to feed on. Somehow they know when to show up to kill an invasion of the bad guys.


The underside of the leaves have white spiraling lines, which is from the adult whiteflies.

Screen Shot 2018-03-26 at 12.02.22 PM


I found lady bug larvae on the same leaf as the white fuzz. I had to trim up the hibiscus plant and spray it a few times with the hose to reduce the white fly population. I’m still seeing lots of ladybugs (in many forms) on the plant.

Fuzzy white aphids and lady bug larvae
Fuzzy white aphids and lady bug larvae

Hibiscus plants are very hardy. They can be cut way back, trimmed and left without water and still grow fine. I made the mistake of planting this little shrub too close to the house. The stems in back don’t get enough air circulation and hence the problem.