Sap-sucking lice, such as aphids or scale insects, can be found on almost all plants, including, of course, boxwood. To avoid serious damage, you should take appropriate countermeasures at the first signs. The chemical club is not always the first choice.
How do you fight lice on boxwood?
Answer: If there are aphids on boxwood, affected shoot tips can be cut off and home remedies such as cooled black tea or whole milk and water mixture can be sprayed. Oily preparations based on neem or rapeseed oil help with comma scale insects.
Aphids
Green aphids prefer to attack the soft shoot tips of the boxwood, where they multiply extremely quickly and also colonize neighboring plants within a very short time. The animals can jump long distances and migrate from one box tree to the next, but usually do not change the plant species. Typical characteristics of a boxwood aphid infestation are:
- In particular, the leaves at the tips of the shoots deform like a spoon.
- Shoot tips can curl up like a cabbage.
- White, fluffy spots can be seen on the leaves.
- This is an easily removable wax wool that is intended to protect the larvae.
Aphid larvae hatch between April and May and develop into adults within a few weeks. These in turn lay new eggs in August, which then protect the next generation over the winter for the coming year. Typical side effects of an aphid infestation are, for example:
- leaves sticky due to honeydew
- increased occurrence of ants, which literally milk the aphids due to the honeydew
- sometimes black coating on the leaves, which is a sooty mold fungus
Fighting aphids
Infected shoot tips should be cut off during the larval development period between April and May and disposed of with household waste. There are also a number of proven home remedies that work effectively against aphids. Spray treatments with cooled black tea or a mixture of whole milk and water are useful for less severe infestations.
Scale insects
If the leaves and shoots of the boxwood turn brown and dry out apparently for no reason, you should examine the undersides of the leaves carefully: If you can see elongated, small and dark-colored bumps, it is the comma scale insect. Here too, the animals overwinter as eggs on the plant and then hatch as larvae the following spring. Oily preparations based on neem or rapeseed oil have proven to be effective as control measures.
Tip
If numerous white-colored flakes appear on the boxwood in the sunny month of May, it is by no means a pest. Instead, you will witness a completely natural phenomenon in which the white, waxy protective covering of the fresh leaves is shed as they sprout. No countermeasures are required.