aaaargh grey stuff on me sprouts!!

[antipodes]

help! one of my sprout plants has like a grey powder all over it, and on closer inspection I am wondering if it is not some kind of insect egg?????
sound familiar to anyone????

[antipodes]

[sarah]

sounds a bit like white fly?

[Fork]

I agree,defo sounds like white fly

[Tora]

I agree, it's whitefly. I have lots of them on my kales....  :-\

[keef]

The frost normally see's them off..

[nomis1959]

If its grey and you can squash it between thumb & finger on the affected area and it feels waxy it is probably  mealy aphid.
Very destructive once it gets a hold ,easily dealt with by a thorough application of soapy water. if the infestation is kept in check the plants will recover. The problem goes away as the weather gets colder.
Whitefly seem to be ever present on Brassicas in general but especially on taller plants like sprouts and PS broccoli.
This year doesn't seem to bad for whitefly. a good shake when the wind is strong seems to get shot of clouds of them, they don't like a fine mist of soap solution either ,this also helps to clean off some of their sticky residue!!

[antipodes]

oh yucky yucky yucky!!!! I had better get down there with some soap then. I can't believe it, they have appeared in the space of a couple of days!!!! And the sprouts are just forming so I would hate to lose them. Thanks a lot everyone.

[Fork]

The frost normally see's them off..

There always seems to be plenty about here despite a good frost....ours must be mutants  :o

[Lauren S]

Just another thing to watch out for. With all these pests about (most I have never heard of till joining A4A) it's a wonder we manage to grow anything.

Lauren  :(

[nomis1959]

Re the whitefly and frost ,I agree.although they not so busy when its colder,
I have never known them to die off.
The numbers present seems to vary from year to year presumably affected by weather.
At the moment in my locality they are the least prevalent that I can ever remember at this time of year   

[keef]

Mine do normally dissappear around now ?? My lottie is on top of a hill, quite an exposed location - perhaps its just a little too rough for them.. I've never bothered doing anything to get rid of them, and not had any problems.

[SnooziSuzi]

I've got a horrendous amount of them on my sprouts  >:(

I harvested a few of the sprouts last week, hoping to have a nice sunday dinner, but found that they'd even got into the first 3 or 4 layers of sprout leaves!  >:( >:(

It's a soapy soloution for me (or rather them) tomorrow when I get down to the lottie.  Can anyone recommend a soap brand to use, as I've heard it shouldn't be any of the modern washing up types...

Ta
XX

[antipodes]

Ok got a picture, if you are ready for something gory.

[SnooziSuzi]

 :o

Looks just like my sprouts  :'(

[manicscousers]

and ours,  :)

[Barnowl]

and our PSBs

[caroline7758]

and my calabrese and psb :(