Treating Pests: Whiteflies

Pests are a natural part of Gardyning. Despite your best prevention efforts, pests can happen, but it’s okay! If you or Kelby have identified whiteflies on your Gardyn, keep reading for our recommended treatment plan.

Not sure you have whiteflies? Review our pest identification guide here, or take our pest ID quiz!

• Harvest as much as you can to increase airflow and give the pests fewer hiding spots.

• On the remaining plants/leaves, trim away leaves with heavy pest populations, or heavy signs of their damage, to immediately reduce the pest population, increase air flow, and provide fewer hiding spots for pests.

Whiteflies have two main life stages: young without wings, and adults with wings. Each stage must be treated simultaneously to fully eradicate the issue. Continue treatment until you no longer see the pests or new signs of their damage.

First, to help limit adult whiteflies, you can add yellow sticky traps to your Gardyn to attract and catch the adults before they are able to lay eggs. This can help reduce the number of eggs on your plants and, if continued, can prevent future infestations.

Next, spray any plants where you see adults, including the tops and bottoms of leaves, with a Castile soap solution. If you don't see adult whiteflies on a plant, you can skip spraying that plant. Be sure to turn off your Gardyn's lights before spraying, and leave them off for 4 hours after spraying to prevent your plants from getting burned while the soap dries.

To make the spray, mix Castile soap with water at a ratio of 1 Tablespoon of soap to 1 quart of water. Note that this is a higher concentration than the Castile soap dunk method requires, so you should not reuse the same solution for both treatment methods.

Spray plants with adults every 4 days until you no longer see adult whiteflies. For an ideal treatment plan, dunk your plants to treat young whiteflies the day after you spray, so that you have two consecutive days of treatment to optimize disrupting the pests' life cycle.

To treat young whiteflies, conduct a Castile Soap Dunk every 4-5 days for a total of at least 4 dunks to disrupt the pests’ life cycle at every stage on every plant. This will take a little over 2 weeks to complete.

• If you don’t immediately have Castile soap or yellow sticky traps on hand, start with harvesting and trimming.

• Move any yCubes germinating nearby (such as in a Nursery on your Gardyn’s lid) and treat them as if they have pests, then continue germinating them away from your Gardyn to avoid cross-contamination while you’re still fighting pests.

• Review and begin/continue implementing our prevention methods to help lower your risk of an increased pest infestation and avoid introducing new pests while fighting the existing infestation.

Questions? Reach us at support@mygardyn.com, or chat with us. We're here to help!