So I've been back from our mini-vacation for about a week now, and I'm just now getting around to updating y'all on how my plants fared while I was gone. The answer is: half were just fine, and half died. Yeah. Spider mites.
They took out two pots of marigolds, two romaine lettuce plants, all the dahlias, and the tomatoes. There wasn't much to do but move them away from all the other plants and then pull them up and toss them out. Everything else fared really well, but I was amazed at how much damage was done by those spider mites in just one week. Next time I leave town I will try to isolate the plants more instead of grouping them all together in one location.
In other news, I got some new plants! And they are already teaching me valuable plant lessons. For instance, a plant may look healthy when it actually has huge problems and may not be salvageable. I bought an orchid on clearance - it looked great! I figured it was on sale because it had lost 1/3 of its blossoms and was completely in bloom. Not so - when I got home and pulled the plastic container out of the decorative pot it was sold in, I found about four inches of disgusting, smelly water. And when I took the plant itself out of that container, I found nothing but disgusting, smelly brown roots. I did the best I could to trim off the rotten roots, but they were the majority. The poor plant already looks sad - without healthy roots it can't get enough moisture. See how it's drooping and turning yellow?
Those clearance "green thumb" racks at big home improvement stores can have some great finds on them too, though. I found a really nice spathiphyllum, which is the species of plant that includes the peace lily, for about $2 and it is gorgeous. I also got sanseveria trifasciata - a snake plant. It was kind of sad looking but has completely rebounded and is even shooting up new growth. I got two scheffleras - umbrella trees - and admittedly, the one from the clearance rack has died.
Spathiphyllum - apparently the blossoms turn green when they ripen, at which point you should clip them off (I haven't yet).
Sansevaria trifasciata - this is supposed to be very easy to grow, and I would agree.
Schefflera - I read that these plants are sensitive to being moved around too much. I haven't repotted this little guy yet. It should grow to be much bigger if it survives my care.
I also got two new ferns from the clearance rack. My rabbit's foot fern has done fantastic so I bought it some company. Both the compact boston fern and the lemon drop fern I bought had small sections of dead branches which I trimmed away. The boston fern is looking a little sickly, but the poor lemon drop is infested with - not again! - spider mites. I would have taken pictures to share, but spider mites are too tiny to see and I immediately rinsed the plant as soon as I noticed dry leaves and light webbing.
At least this time I caught it before it was completely infested and could spread. I did some research in the library on my new plant friends (also where I learned their species) and found a pretty good book called The Complete Houseplant Survival Manual by Barbara Pleasant (what a nice name!) She suggests clipping off affected portions, sealing them in a plastic bag, and throwing them away. Next, you should spray them with a mixture of two quarts of lukewarm water, 1 tablespoon dishwashing soap, and 1 tablespoon canola or corn oil. Mrs. Pleasant cautions against using any kind of pesticides because spider mites quickly become resistant. She also recommends just throwing the plant away if it's small (it is) and inexpensive (it was $1), but I feel like I can't let those mites get away with killing another plant. So we'll see how this soap-oil mixture works in the next few weeks, or if it just kills the plant faster.
That's all for now. I'm working on getting together enough bedding to harvest my worm compost and set them up in fresh bedding, so hopefully I'll be able to write about that soon.
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