This Week In Houseplants
I've got freaking GNATS
This is what happens when you water your plants enough!
Gnats!
Me!
They’re congregating under my peperomia sarcophylla - that’s their base - but buzzing round my bedroom like they own it.
I no longer bother with pesticides or anything like that. I just make inhospitable conditions for the plants. For thrips, that involves squishing them, and brushing off any larvae with my hand (I keep any plants with thrips infestations on my dressing table so I don’t forget).
For the fungus gnats. I’m going to bottom water. After a while the soil will dry out on the top and the gnats will move on. The peperomia leaves are close to the soil so they create a nice moist tent for them. It’ll take a while for the soil to dry out but it’s fine. They tend to stay near the plants - we don’t eat/drink in the bedroom so they leave us alone.
This is NOT the most efficient way of dealing with pests (the most efficient method, alas, is chucking out the whole plant) but it works fine for me.
Keeping pest levels manageable is less overwhelming then trying to eradicate them completely. This is the time of year when they’re suuuper prolific, so keep your eyes peeled.
New video - orchid care
This is NOT a video about the best way to care for orchids. It’s a video about how to get your orchid to bloom whilst doing the bare minimum.
Yes, that IS a picture of my orchid in the thumbnail. I am VERY proud of her.
If I’m being honest I don’t think I say much in this article that you haven’t read here before - tl;dr is that temperature isn’t as important as light and water, but warmth is a great way of speeding up growth and cold plants can get stressed which can attract pests.
Would I turn my heating on just for my plants? Absolutely not.
Please could someone read this article and weigh in how they think they’re watering the plants upstairs. Is there room to walk behind them?And what is that behind the sofa in the second to last photo? Is it a massive leaf? It looks like a colocasia but there’s only one leaf. WHAT’S GOING ON?!
I do absolutely want to live there though. I’m not sure the design would work *quite* so well in North Yorkshire though!
Have an awesome week!
lol about the one leaf plant. And it is either under or over watered - look at the yellowing edges. I’m guessing they can walk around upstairs. Or they are fake plants. I didn’t read the article.
Place dry coffee grinds over the soil of the pot plant, then cover with 2cm of small 5-7mm pepples.... Gnat will be gone