How To Keep Bugs Off Indoor Plants: Expert Tips
Indoor plants offer a simple and relatively low-maintenance option to outdoor gardening. However, you may still find dealing with the damages done by plant bugs. Finding out how to get rid of these bugs is hugely frustrating, and it can be challenging.
There are a few essential steps you can take to prevent bugs from attacking your houseplants, which will work best when used in combination. In this article, you will acquire some tips on how to keep bugs off indoor plants for good.
What are Indoor or Houseplant Pests?
Houseplant pests are small, tiny bugs or mites that feast on the leaves, stems, or roots of your indoor plants. There are various types of bugs that can infest indoor plants. Some bugs crawl around on the leaves or in the soil, and some can fly. Others don’t seem to move at all and resemble a fungus or disease. Regardless of how they move or look, they are incredibly annoying!
Why Do Indoor Plants Have Bugs?
Infestations are more serious inside the house than they are outside because there are no natural predators to control these pests. Though your indoor plants can be infested with bugs any time during the year, they are most vulnerable during winter.  Here are the reasons why:
- Houseplants enter into a state of dormancy during the winter season, which can make them susceptive to attacks from pests.
- Winter growth on many houseplants is weaker than it is in the summer, making it more exposed to infestation.
- Humidity levels are significantly lower inside the house during winter, which is the ideal breeding ground for some types of plant bugs. Plus, your plants do not get fresh air inside the house.
Where are these Bugs from?
For you to know how to keep bugs off indoor plants, it’s necessary to know where they came from.
These bugs are tiny and can seem to emerge from nowhere. More often than not, these annoying bugs come from:
- open windows and doors
- bags of potting soil
- new plants
- a plant that was outside
- fresh flowers or produce
How to Get Rid of Indoor Plant Bugs Naturally?
If you find any pests on your indoor plants, it’s crucial to act fast and start treatment immediately! You want to know how to keep bugs off indoor plants to stop them from spreading to your other plants. It’s always best to stick with natural methods and products. Natural products or home remedies for controlling houseplant pests work great!
Tips on How to Get Rid of Bugs on Indoor Plant
The most common houseplant bugs feast on plants and are often found on the leaves, flower buds, and the stems. Here are some essential tips for getting rid of pests on indoor plants naturally:
- First, you will need to isolate the plant immediately to prevent the infestation from spreading to your other plants. Monitor the surrounding plants carefully for signs of plant pests for several weeks.
- Some bugs can leave the plant and hide for a long time. So make sure to completely clean the area where the plant is sitting using soapy water. You can also disinfect the area with alcohol if you want.
- Wash the infested plant with insecticidal solvent, or use a mild liquid soap. Soap eliminates the bugs upon contact. But be cautious with the type of soap that you use. Some have degreasers and detergents that can harm delicate plants. Take a spot-test on your plant before washing all of the leaves.
- Clean the pot and plant tray with soapy water too. Pests can easily hide under the rim of the pot or plate, or even on the bottoms of them.
- Use cotton swabs soaked in alcohol and dab it on the bugs to kill and remove them from the plant.
- Use neem oil to treat the plant for long-term pest control and prevention. Neem oil is a natural insecticide for houseplants that works to kill and repel bugs. Alternatively, you could use horticultural oil or hot pepper spray.
How to Get Rid of Tiny Flying Bugs on Indoor Plants
Most indoor plant bugs fly at some point in their lifecycle, which makes them even more challenging to control.
However, eliminating the flying bugs alone isn’t going to be enough to defeat a houseplant pest infestation. You need to destroy the eggs and nymphs to get rid of these pests on indoor plants altogether. These are some additional on how to keep bugs off indoor plants:
- Use yellow sticky traps or houseplant sticky sticks to catch and kill little flying bugs in indoor plants. This will help manage them. It is non-toxic, and it can stop them from flying to nearby plants too.
- Suck up the flying bugs using the vacuum cleaner. This works well to catch a large group of flying indoor plant pests quickly. Just be careful not to suck up the leaves in the process.
Additional Tip to Keep Those Bugs Off for Good
To eliminate houseplant pests, you must be vigilant in fighting them. You can’t just treat the plant one time and expect to kill all of the indoor plant insects, nymphs, and eggs. It can take numerous remedies to eliminate them for good.
So once you begin treating a plant, examine it every day and continue to operate it until all indications of the infestation are gone. Common houseplant pests can multiply very quickly, and it takes numerous treatments to control them, and eventually get rid of them completely.
Conclusion
​It's not fair to have bugs in your houseplants. But don't feel bad about it, because it is a widespread problem. But, you don't have to live with it either. You can eliminate them, and have bug-free indoor plants!
It can be challenging to manage houseplant pests, and that recurring infestations are no fun at all. But now that you understand how to keep bugs off indoor plants and prevent them from getting back, you can win this battle!