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Tips & Updates Avoiding Aphids on Houseplants: Typically, plants get aphids from coming in from the warm, humid summer days outside. The dry heat from the furnace during the fall dries out the plants making the susceptible to aphids and other bugs. One thing you can try is to keep the humidity high around the plants by running a tabletop waterfall near them. Another way to keep things moist is to take a lipped cookie tray, and lay river rocks evenly on the bottom. Add water until it is level to the river rocks. Place the pots on top of the rocks. If the rocks are too uneven for the pots, put a wire wrack over them and place the pots on that. The water will slowly evaporate in the air around the plants. Be sure to change to water often, and clean the tray out as well so mold doesn’t grow. If your plants still get aphids, then you have a few options. There are plenty poisons and sprays on the market. We honestly have not had good luck with these. What worked for us was to actually take the plant outside for 10-20 minutes. Gently shake the plant and leaves so the aphids fly off. Do it one last time before bringing the plant in. The cold kills the bugs. After about 20 minutes, bring the plant in. After a couple of days, do it again. Eventually, we killed off all the aphids. |
Tree spikes are great, don’t overlook using them: In the spring, I go to the garden center and buy tree spikes. Trees get greatly overlooked by most home owners, particularly here in the city. I think there is a misunderstanding that the city should be taking care of most of the trees lining the streets. This simply is not true.There are a variety of tree stakes you can buy for different trees. Some for flowering trees, some for evergreens. At my last house, we had a very damaged tree in our front yard. It had some major trauma from a storm and a large section of the trunk was gone. After a few years of tree stakes, new growth started sprouting from the broken section. Eventually, after 8 years of care, you couldn’t even see the broken off section past all the new growth. Our tree looked healthier than many others on our street. The other benefit of healthy trees is that they can withstand bad weather, which was an issue with this tree, as well as we are seeing with the trees at our new house. A huge section of our ash fell onto our garage during a storm this summer, causing costly expense not to mention dangerous. Tree stakes are very helpful in keeping your trees healthy and in one piece. Add it to your Spring to-do list. Pop them in your cart in between your primroses and tulips. Fall planting is cost effective and efficient: Fall is often looked over for a time to put new plants in the ground. It actually is great. The plants are typically half off or more at the nursery, so that you can really stay within budget and get great deals. Though the plants are very root-bound, and probably don’t look too great, it really doesn’t matter. Fall beds are at the end of their life cycle anyway. New plants will come in strong in the spring. Just be sure that you mulch the new plants for the first frost. Fall is also a great time to move and split plants. I find it is better to move a plant when their life cycle is over versus when they are about to bloom in the spring. Again, plants are not going to look that great, but neither do your beds typically (well, at least mine don’t!). |
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©2007 Flora Caputo |
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