The Rural Voice, 1998-03, Page 44Gardening
Keeping your houseplants in top shape
By Rhea Hamilton -Seeger
Some time after Christmas you
may discover that your flourishing
houseplants are starting to lag.
Leaves are sticky or turning pale and
wilting. Sometimes new plants are
introduced over the holidays and
bring with them intruders to the
windowsill and then there are other
insects that have just recently built up
a population Targe enough to do
damage to your favourite houseplant.
Never fear, there are ways to save the
houseplants and foil the bugs.
One of the easiest to see is scale
insects. Hard scale insects look like
little brown waxy dots and are quite
easy to pick off if there are only a
few. They can be easily controlled
by strong blasts of insecticide soap or
soapy water applied every five days.
If you have succulent leaves on your
plants then you can easily handle
them and take a soapy cloth and wipe
them off.
We have a schefflera at work and
last spring it was so covered by
brown scales that it looked like
brown bark. I took it home and
cleaned it up with insecticide soap,
set it under a tree for the summer and
never gave it another thought. I took
it back to the office in the fall. About
the end of January, I noticed it wasn't
doing as well as I had hoped. A
closer inspection turned up quite a
few scales and now I am back to
square one again. The trick here was
to keep a closer eye on the plant
when I brought it back to the office
and then I could have avoided this
infestation a second time. When
dealing with insects it is not enough
to know what to combat them with —
you have to know the pest's life cycle
so you can go back and get the newly
hatched insects before they become a
problem.
Another noticeable insect is the
little white furry dots on both the
upper and under sides of the leaves.
These are mealy bugs and they are
soft scale cousins. They like tropical
plants in dry rooms and that pretty
well describes a majority of homes.
They are easily removed by using a
40 THE RURAL VOICE
cotton swab and dotting them with a
drop of denatured alcohol or nail
polish remover. The alcohol
dissolves their protective coat of wax.
Scale insects suck the juices from the
leaves leaving them yellowed. If the
infestation is severe enough, the
leaves will drop.
The next houseplant insect is a
small black fly that I often mistake
for a fruit fly until I realize that there
is no fruit on my counter. These are
fungus gnats and while they are not
particularly harmful they are a
nuisance. If you don't keep an eye
on them they will lay their eggs in the
soil and the maggots will feed on the
plant roots causing the plant to wilt.
Fungus gnats like cold wet
conditions, therefore change their
environment. If you can, move youF
plant to a warmer window and let the
surface of the soil dry out between
waterings. Malathion may be applied
to the soil every two to three days for
up to two weeks if you have a really
bad infestation.
My big problem is white flies.
They rise up like a cloud when I
water my plants. You can find them
on the underside of the leaves where
they are sucking the juice from the
plant and leaving a sticky residue
called honeydew. This honeydew
attracts ants and can support black
sooty mold. Their entire life cycle
takes one month so you could set up a
program of spraying every three days
until they are gone. White flies are
put off by anything with nicotine in it
so you can make up a tea of tobacco
thickened with a bit of soap or white
flour to make it stick to the underside
of the leaves. You can also spray the
underside of the leaves with
malathion for the same results.
Then there are the insects that are
hard to see, yet evidence of thcir
presence is hard to miss. Red spider
mites will tum leaves yellow from the
tip to the stem until they curl up and
drop off. The new leaves may be
stunted and there is the ever-present
stickiness of honeydew. You can
spot red spider mite with the aid of a
magnifying glass but you are more
likely to see their red webs under the
leaves or between leaf stalks. You
can try spraying with a forceful blast
of cold water or seek out a spray
product from your garden centre but
sometimes the best way to get rid of
them is to turf the plant. Sad but true.
The last of the sucking insects to
hit the window sill is the aphid.
There are hundreds of different kinds
of aphid and they come in with the
houseplants that have been
holidaying on the patio during the
summer months. Aphids cluster on
new growth, causing it to be
discoloured and deformed. For small
infestations you can run your fingers
along the stems crushing them or try
insecticide soap. For larger problems
you can use malathion.
The bottom line in the battle with
insects is to be careful with what you
use. The first line of defence is
naturally healthy plants. The next
step when the insect has been
identified is to use an active program
of spraying with an insecticide soap.
If you do use a product from the
garden centre that contains
malathion, I don't think you have
broken the rule of organic gardeners.
Malathion is an organic chemical that
is slightly soluble in water. Like any
chemical you should exercise care
and caution and you will enjoy happy
healthy plants.0
Rhea Ilamilton-Seeger raises two
children, and is a skilled cook and
gardener.