I can’t tell you how much I enjoy being out here in my little greenhouse during the winter. Well, the garden is certainly dressed in its winter clothes. In here, it feels like perpetual spring and my houseplants are thriving. Well, sort of. I just discovered that some of my little pepper plants that I tried to hold over from white, summer and fall are infested with spider mites.
Now this is a little insidious creature that you need to be aware of particularly during the winter months with your house plants. It’s particularly prone to get into plants like this beautiful ivy. Many of the ivies that you might have in your house, you should check them now for spider mites. They’re tiny little insects that create a web like structure, hence the name spider mite. They love my little ivy as you can see here. And I love this thing because—well, you know, it’s got beautiful brigaded foliage and it grows well with little care. If you’re spraying it, you want to get on the underside of the leaf because that’s where they love to hang out. Now, what I like to do is just saturate the leaves like this. And doing it out here on the greenhouse, I don’t have to worry about the spray getting on anything in the house.
And the other thing that’s good about using a safe product is that with this insecticide, I don’t have to worry about breathing the fumes which is really important to me. Well, for a lot of reasons. But one is that I’m in this small contained greenhouse so you want to be careful on what you use. This is an organic product that works really well.
Now, I’ve also found in the house that one of my other favorite plants, the prairie plant is suffering from spider mites because you see, they love the dry conditions. In the house, it’s dry. The soil gets a little dry and they just jump out everywhere. This prairie plants typically love shallow soil so I’ve got them planted in some really low dish and they’re great looking. But I got to keep a watch on them to make sure that the spider mites don’t get out of hand. Just a little winter tip for some of your favorite house plants.
If you’d like more information on this topic or any other gardening topic, just check out my website PAllenSmith.com
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