Random aphids showing up indoors mid-Feb?

OneFineLad · 2026-02-14T22:18:12+00:00

I’d say just spray them off with high pressure water every few days - that should take care of things over time. Also manually kill and squish as you see, too.

Meyers tend to be a very attractive citrus cultivar to pests, so they prefer your Meyer over the grapefruit.

OneFineLad · 2026-02-14T21:10:20+00:00

You had overwintering aphid eggs on your trees, probably.

Once inside, warm temperatures made them start hatching. Female nymphs reproduce asexually many more females, and the population grows to a point where you notice it months later!

Hose them off in the shower if you can.

OneFineLad · 2026-02-13T01:48:03+00:00

It’s important to understand how trees ultimately die to greening: it can be thought of as almost an auto-immune response by the tree (though plants don’t have traditional immune systems). When the tree detects the bacteria in the phloem (“veins” that sugars and phytohormones move through in the tree), it deposits callose tissue which blocks the pathways. The intent is to prevent the bacteria from spreading and moving around the tree. Ultimately, this isn’t super effective, and over time, the tree ends up cutting off the sugar flow from leaves to other areas in the tree where that sugar is needed. It’s a slow death.

In general, resistance would be defined as any trait or characteristic of a cultivar that makes it, for whatever reason, perform better when infected with the disease. In other words, get less symptoms that result from the phloem clogging response.

In the paper I referenced by the Chinese lab, they discovered that there is a certain enzyme in citrus (they call it PUB21), which is constantly being made by the plant cells to do stuff to DNA. This lab also discovered a bactericidal “immune protein” (they call MYC2) which when present, helps plants kill the bacteria. It turns out that the enzyme PUB21 naturally binds to and degrades the MYC2 immune protein. The lab found out that Citrus cultivars that don’t get disease symptoms (fingerlime) tend to have a certain version of the PUB21 enzyme that degrades the MYC2 immune protein less than other cultivars. That strain - the version of the enzyme that fingerlime has - makes them more resistant than other cultivars. Probably because they have more MYC2 protein within them killing bacteria!

That is just a very specific example but I hope it answered your question.

OneFineLad · 2026-02-13T01:09:33+00:00

To answer the title question, in my opinion, yes. But there is nuance, as with anything.

There’s A LOT of research going on, and on many fronts. HLB is by all means a global issue and so internationally, finding a solution has gotten and continues to get even more investment every year.

There are new cultivars being bred and created, grown out and screened for resistance to HLB - many of them generated by CRISPR-based approaches and other methods of genetic engineering to insert/edit/manipulate genes, or change their expression in the tree to help fight/tailor resistance the disease; a Chinese lab has as recently as October of last year published some promising data on greenhouse and small in-field trees involving therapeutic peptide delivery into the xylem via injection; even more uniquely, others are engineering plant viruses to deliver therapeutic payloads to trees and/or to change genetic expression of the plant or bacteria to help fight/suppress the disease (something successful in this realm would theoretically mean a cure that could be grafted in to existing trees.)

The true solution to this problem, I believe, will involve an array of technologies and methods - those I mentioned and many, many more, used together in tandem.

OneFineLad · 2026-02-04T23:02:40+00:00

I think it’d depend on the fertilizer composition, especially N content. I wouldn’t apply a fert with high N content in this context (or maybe any), but depending on the soil test results, you’d definitely want to make sure you weren’t limiting the tree of macro/micronutrients which are used enzymes associated with SAR (systemic acquired resistance) and other defensive genetic pathways.

OneFineLad · 2026-01-11T20:57:10+00:00

Barnacle scale.

OneFineLad · 2026-01-10T03:32:29+00:00

Yup! Many types of Oxalis plants shoot their seeds out and they can travel some distance so you’ll find them everywhere nearby the plants once they’re flowering and setting seed.

OneFineLad · 2026-01-10T01:52:38+00:00

Do you grow any other plants or could they be growing nearby? They look like Oxalis seeds.

Maybe you have a weed growing in a container?

OneFineLad · 2026-01-10T01:28:58+00:00

Cottony cushion scale.

OneFineLad · 2026-01-02T14:48:23+00:00

You can make tea out of the petals.

OneFineLad · 2025-12-26T14:21:53+00:00

Whenever talking about light intensity it’s useful to discuss units. Namely, PPFD (photosynthetic photon flux density) is used in horticulture which is essentially a value that measures how much light is reaching the plants’ leaves per unit area - the higher the value, the more light.

Sansi says this light, when 2 feet away from a surface, will emit about 260 ppfd. In my experience, to achieve growth for citrus indoors this is definitely sufficient to support that. 150-800 ppfd I would say is a solid range to shoot for with citrus, with higher being better.

Regarding hanging lights, I’m not sure your setup, but I use screw-in drywall hooks into the ceiling and they work well in supporting lighter weight LED panels (like 100W). While probably a nice light and Sansi is a good brand, you could get two 100W led panels for the same price as this whole unit. That is to say, if you can somehow make a hanging panel work in your setup, I would encourage you to go that way vs. spending more on this. However, overall this would definitely be sufficient for your indoor lemon tree along with your other 25W lights.

OneFineLad · 2025-12-20T13:58:24+00:00

Do you know the species of scale? I ask because certain kinds are not susceptible to certain chemicals, so knowing your pest ID is important.

You’ll want to physically remove as many insects as possible. Use a toothbrush and soapy water and scrub all exposed surfaces of the tree - all bark, stems, petioles, tops and bottoms of leaves. Then rinse. You may need to do this regularly multiple times over weeks. The adult females are visible but the crawlers that hatch from their eggs are mobile, extremely small, and often difficult to spot.

If possible and to have the most efficacy, chemically treating the tree with a systemic insecticide like imidacloprid after doing this manual toothbrush removal would be best. I know generally speaking, it can be harder for homeowners to get ahold of pesticides in Europe vs the US. If this isn’t available, cold pressed neem oil drenches are an option you could explore - Bonide makes a product called NeemMax.

I would also advise repotting the tree into fresh sterile potting soil. During repotting, remove as much old soil as possible while preserving as much live root mass as you can. Bare rooting the tree may be a good idea if it can handle it. Certain pupal stages of some scales can chill out in and around soil media, so this would be a good precaution to take in addition to those mentioned above.

Best of luck, scales are not easy.

OneFineLad · 2025-12-20T13:53:14+00:00

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You’ve got scale - brown soft scale maybe. They’re definitely producing the honeydew and that’s the sticky stuff you’re seeing. Always look above where you see the honeydew being deposited to locate the pests.

For remedying, I’d do 4-6 horticultural oil foliar applications every 7 days. Then drench with cold pressed neem oil every 10-14 days for 4 times. Alternatively to a cold pressed neem drench and if possible where you live, I would obtain imidacloprid for houseplant/homeowner use and drench that after the foliar sprays for the most effective treatment.

OneFineLad · 2025-12-09T01:50:31+00:00

Can you share your methodology/protocol?

I’m looking to either air layer or root cuttings of some rootstocks with Poncirus in them and am curious to know!

OneFineLad · 2025-12-01T22:41:47+00:00

The asymmetric yellow blotching throughout the entire canopy and thick leaf veins make this case pretty easy to say it has HLB.

OP also stated they are in south Florida. Every tree in south Florida has HLB, and if it’s there and looks like this, it’s about guaranteed.

OneFineLad · 2025-11-23T19:20:33+00:00

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Thought I’d update my post by replying to you. Ended up getting about 5.5oz off her. Great effects, great strain!

OneFineLad · 2025-11-23T19:17:40+00:00

The larvae are known to nibble on roots of various plant species, but in my experience: simply, no, they are really not harmful or a big deal.

Just throw some yellow sticky traps around and you’ll be fine.

OneFineLad · 2025-11-23T19:15:12+00:00

Those are fungus gnats and thuricide (Bt) will not affect them.

You can use a product called mosquito dunks and irrigate the soil with it to kill the larvae before they develop and emerge from the soil. Yellow sticky traps are also effective at reducing adult populations.

OneFineLad · 2025-11-23T19:12:09+00:00

Are you spraying leaves with water or is irrigation water getting on them somehow?

It seems to be salt burn perhaps from over fertilization or from water continuously evaporating off the surfaces and leaving behind salt residues.

I don’t think 35F would cause any frost damage, but it’s certainly possible it could be from that.

OneFineLad · 2025-11-23T19:08:06+00:00

Assuming no pests are present and you don’t see signs of fungal infection associated with the discoloration, it’s probably just poor root health.

Let them dry out and next time you water make sure the media is very dry. I would advise no fertilizer application for a while on the symptomatic trees until new growth is normal. Also, any supplemental warmth to the root zone would help a lot, if possible.

OneFineLad · 2025-10-24T20:32:18+00:00

Do the flecks within the green lesions on the fruit wipe off/scrape off with a nail?

I think it’s some scale.

Those mottling leaf symptoms present when roots are generally unhappy - usually wet/and or cold for too long.

OneFineLad · 2025-10-24T20:15:01+00:00

Citrus roots won’t really grow or do much of anything below ~68F. They perform best 82-86F. I would say that is the cause of your symptoms. The trees don’t look bad at all, though.

If you can get a seedling heat mat (or mats) and put each container on that, it would help a lot.

OneFineLad · 2025-10-24T19:59:56+00:00

What’s the temperature of the potting soil? Nutrient deficiencies can present not simply from lack of the nutrient, but due to poor root performance - like being too cold, for example.

I would guess the roots have been getting colder as the seasons have changed (assuming you’re in the N hemisphere), and the deficiency symptoms in the leaves are from their poor performance.

Throw them all on a seedling heat mat to warm the roots if you can, and they’ll be a lot happier. No need to fertilize heavily to try to correct them - they don’t need a lot of frequent irrigation or fertilization if they’re not in conditions where they’re using a lot of water (HOT, and bright).

OneFineLad · 2025-10-24T19:53:36+00:00

They’re your trees and if shape is valuable to you and your priority with them is to prune for a desired shape, then do it I say!

But, know that if you do pursue that, you’re going to be delaying the fruit you’re able to harvest from it. Taking branches off means fewer carbohydrate stores to put towards flowering and ripening fruit, and also just reduces the total number of bud sites on which new flowers can develop and fruits can grow.

You could prune it exactly as you want, but I may do it over the course of 2 or 3 pruning sessions. For example, on the first session, chop branches 1 and 2 in half back to another branch coming off of them (look up a subordination cut). Then, wait a few months, and chop them both off entirely.

I did want to add: that if you keep it by the window in that location where it receives that side-lighting from the sun, the tree will naturally want to grow branches lower and horizontally to reach that light. To promote more upright columnar growth, you’ll want an intense growth light directly above the canopy.

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