WHITEFLY

Whitefly are the scourge of greenhouse gardeners, the presence of which is indicated by white scales on the underside of the leaves and quite often, a white cloud of flies will take to the air if an infested plant is touched. Affected plants can develop viruses and sooty mould as the sap-sucking experts secrete honeydew onto leaves. It's not just greenhouse growers who need to watch out for this airborne pest; you'll find brassicas are equally at risk during the summer months.

The hero of our organic pest control range is a tiny parasitic wasp named encarsia formosa. The wasp will lay its eggs directly into the whitefly scales which are commonplace on the underside of leaves; the eggs then hatch and feed on the pupating whitefly inside, turning the scale black before the adult encarsia emerges.

We've also got some highly adhesive yellow sticky traps - the whitefly equivalent of a red rag to a bull - which will claim plenty of early fliers and give you fair warning of the scale of the raids to come.