I've got the white fly blues

I have had a few white flies in my greenhouse but they seem to get worse each year. They particularly like the brugs and the flowering maples. I have sprayed with Raid House & Garden to no real avail. Can anyone give me some good advice? I thought about using a bug bomb but am afraid I might kill the plants too.
I find that they do not hang around once the plants are outside so I brought them out even though we are not quite at our last frost date.

I heard recently in a gardening seminar that you should not overwinter Flowering Maples in a greenhouse because they bring White Flies. They are hard to get rid of but you could try the yellow sticky cards, predatory insects or chemicals. Good luck.

This is only the first year I have had flowering maples. But this problem has persisited in the brugs for 3 or 4 years.

I never had a white fly until a friend sent me a brug...I wintered the brug over and EVERY leaf was covered in less than a month...I moved a couple of the smaller lizards/geckos from our storage area into the greenhouse...no more white flies and now that spring is here with hotter days to come...they are staying of their own accord and I have no mosquitos...I do take them a little lettuce now and then to supplement their diet...I don't know if this solution would work in other parts of the country...but have been using this method for past year and a half...better than praying mantis....

Whiteflies are easy to kill off. They are fairly sensitive to soap spray. However, the life cycle is such that you have to repeat the application every few day.

Much easier to deal with than mealies or scale.

the soap spray sounds like a winner to me. Yes, I have sprayed them but still saw little eggs on the bottom of the leaves. They are all much better now that they are outside. When everything is out of the greenhouse, I am going to bug bomb it.
I like praying mantises (or is it preying, either one seems appropriate since they hold their front legs like they are praying).

Make sure you spray or use bomb to it's directions. Most of the time the life cycle of the whitefly is to repeat 4 or four times 5 to 7 days apart.

I have been spraying my tomatoes with neem oil (diluted in water) but it doesn't keep the white flies down for long. Finally last night I discovered why- there are hordes of them in my geraniums which have taken over my whole front planter. I sprayed the geraniums liberally, but I think they're going to have a major pruning this weekend! I love the idea of lizards and gecko's too- I just may have to try that!

I do too. We had a terrible problem with white flies last year. Threw out many plants. Sprayed with soap spray Made with either ivory soap or dawn dishwashing soap and, olive oil and hot water. Worked some. Before that tried the white fly predator. They didnt hatch out. We are thinking of using a bug bomb this year severak times. Did you try it and did it kill the plants also? My greenhouse is a geodesic dome; 39ft diameter and 2 1/2 stories high that my husband buiilt from a kit. He dug a " basemen"t underneath it and coiled perforated pipe on the bottom and extended them in three places up to the top. Used radon fans to blow the air from up high to the "basement" to store heat for the winter. Worked fairly well; however due to not finishing in time for heat buildup to maximize we had to use some supplemental heat. We had minus degree weather this year. Also we used the wrong caulking between the polycarbone panels and had some leakage which caused problems. Hope to corect this summer as we now know which caulking should have been used that will stretch and not pull away. Unfortunately, my laptop crashed and cannot be restarted. Haven't had time to try and have the hard drive removed and see if the files can be restored. We had the whole process doumenbted on the laptop. If anyone has any other suggestions for white fly containment, please reply.

Lady Bugs - a natural alternative to bug bombs...you can purchase them on the internet - just google Lady Bugs for Sale

I found several in the yard already this weekend, captured them and put them in the greenhouse (aphid issue currently on my Dat's that the home made soap remedy really helped but hey there they were in the yard so...) they also eat mites, white flies, and scale insects

I have had good success with plain old Isopropyl Alcohol. I sprayed the affected plants with a light mist (don't overlook the undersides of the leaves, duh! LOL) every 3 days or so for about 10 days to 2 weeks and have had NO problem since. The alcohol does not hurt the plants and evaporates very quickly, but kills the whiteflies, larvae and eggs on contact. The plants I HAD problems with were my coffee trees and a Meyer lemon and the only time I had probs were on indoor plants and greenhouse trees.

Since eradicating them the first time, I have rarely had a problem. If I see early evidence, out comes the alcohol and 'away they go'!

AngelDance

AngelDance, while the Alcohol works well on plants with thicker, tougher leaves like my lemons I have found that it will burn the leaves of more tender plants...So be careful what you use it on. I doesn't seem to hurt thyme, but don't use it on herbs and veggies with thinner leaves. I'm still keeping constant vigilance as the white-fly seem particularly tough this year. I vacuum and rotate dawn with Earthone's pyrethrum products as well as use yellow cards and fly tapes and cleaning affected leaves and still can't totally eradicate them. As soon as they're available here I'm getting some ladybugs. Even my resident leopord frog, while growing fat, can't keep up.

Jeane - I had to literally dip each of my Datura's this week in a mix of oil, water n soap...I worked a plant show for 5 days and pretty much ignored the GH due to long hours...I paid for that with aphids out the ying yang - because the Datura seedlings are so sensitive (neem oil treatments burned the few I tried them on, along with a few other things so I just got tired of trying and made a bucket mix of the oil/soap and literally dipped each one in it, also made it very easy to wipe off the infestation due to the oil....raining today so I have put them all outside in hopes they get another good washing.)