Some sort of pest - help!

I'm completely new to greenhouses - built my first ever a few months ago, too late to do much this year. Have had some good tomatoes and salad leaves, though...

But now I have an infestation of something I can't identify and don't know what to do with - it seems to have got into just about everything and I'll probably have to deump the lot and start again :-(

The most obvious evidence is thousands of small grey/white flecks, about 1.5 mm long and .5 mm wide, that don't appear to be alive - at least, they don't move. They are covering everything, including the bench surface around the containers and the leaves of what few things I have growing, except Spinach and Basil, boith of which seem fairly ok. Wild Rocket seems worst affected, as well as Land Cress.

By the way, everything is growing in a general purpose compost.

I hope somebody can help - I don't mind throwing everything away and starting again but I want to know what went wrong to avoid it in future!

Apart from this setback, I am LOVING my greenhouse!

Terence

 

Sounds to me like the description of greenfly skins.

They shed their skins and leave a "ghost" behind, not always obvious but sometimes easily seen.

 

I think you're probably right. I've attached a pic and I can see that they are not as inanimate as I thought. I guess I have to dump everything and start agaain, since there's thousands of 'em :-(

Not too big a deal really - I'm not having a lot of success with most of what I've grown - problems with spindly growth mostly (even though there is plenty of light), carrots with no carrot, skinny spring onions and bolting cos lettuces.

I obviously have A LOT to learn!

Terence

 

PS - I'd appreciate anybody body telling me what these little buggers are, since they don't look like any of the pictures of whitefly that I've seen.

 

Well, I've noticed that they seem to move a bit, where I though they were motionless...

The cos were supposedly for all year growing, the carrots for begin ready around Christmas time! Lambs lettuce has gone rather well but is now covered with whatever these things are... ok, assuming they're greenfly skins, I'm assuming that my best bet now is to completely clear the greenhouse and get it ready for next season.

As I said, I'm a complete dunce at this stuff and have never grown anything except tomatoes about 30 years ago!

Terence