Thought I would chat about some old friends, or should I say enemies, today. As all of us have gotten more and more into house plants of one sort or another, one pest or another seems to be on the forefront of our battle to have the most beautiful, healthiest plants. Let's talk about a real pest: the mealy bug.

Easily recognized as a little, white, cottony mass, it is usually clustered where the leaf meets the stem of the plant. Once you see it, get right after it because it spreads rapidly and can spoil the beauty of any house plant collection. (And yes, it will infest many of our garden plants.) Would you believe that one female can lay some 400 eggs that will hatch in 10 days? No, I never counted them. I read the figure somewhere in a scientific report.

Feeding themselves by piercing tender leaves and sucking out the sap, they can quickly ruin a plant. They exude a honeydew-like substance that ants and other insects like; your plant collection will soon become a haven for all sorts of pests.

The old-fashioned way to get rid of these pesky critters, and it still works with a small infestation, is to dab each insect with a Q-tip that has been dipped in rubbing alcohol. Careful, you can damage young tender plants and plant parts. Certainly you can lift each off with a pair of tweezers. Today, house plant sprays containing a chemical called malathion are available at home improvement stores.

Well it is summertime, time for those pesky little insects called white fly. If you haven't noticed them, take a look at the underside of the leaves of your tomato plants and petunias. They thrive on many garden plants. They hurt the plant by sucking the sap from the underside of the leaf and before too long, a large infestation can actually destroy a fairly large plant.

There is a wide assortment of other critters that can do a lot of damage to our plants and you need to be aware of them and how to spot them. Many of them are too small to be seen by the naked eye. Take, for example, the thrip. It is a major bane of gladiolus. Only about an eighth of an inch long, you will see the damage long before you see the insect. Damage manifests itself as a whitening of the leaf, caused by the insect sucking juices from the cells and killing them off.

And as the days and nights warm, the aphids will be out en masse. Small and green, easily missed when you are looking for them, they too damage the plant by sucking the liquids out of the individual cells. Remember that all infestations are easily controlled with due diligence. You have to find them, get the right insecticide and spray continuously, even for a few days after you believe that you have them in check.

Take a look see. If you have any of these insects, we suggest that you go to a home improvement store or a nearby garden center and get some insecticides. Be sure to read the label because not all insecticides work on all insects or on all plants. I repeat, be sure to read the directions. Be sure to spray the undersides of the leaves. That is where they congregate. To be environmentally aware, there is a whole series of aerosols, by Safer, I believe, that will do the job nicely.

Carmen Cosentino operates Cosentino's Florist with his wife, Anne Marie, and daughter, Jessica. He was elected to the National Floriculture Hall of Fame in 1998, and in 2008, received the Tommy Bright award for lifetime achievements in floral education . He can be reached at cosenti@aol.com