Indoor Gardening – Peacock Orchard

Indoor seed starting once again.

This years seed starting is a bit different form last years. For one it’s more low key than last years flurry of excessive seed planting. My set up is a bit different too.

Last year I planted in egg cartons, then moved to toilet paper tubes and then to plastic cups. This year I planted the big things right into the plastic cups and saved the toilet paper rolls for the thinner plants, like the leeks.

This year I’m starting in the fish tank as well. Last year the plants ended up there as I ran out of window space. Now that I know it’s a great space to start seedlings I’ve set them up straight away in it. The tank is also in the basement now, as the wall it used to sit against is now gone.

Fancy set up. Ancient fish tank, fluorescent lights, card table. Whoo boy! Works though.

Few pics of the planting session:

I suspect there is more dirt on the floor than in the cups, but they had fun.

I can’t remember if I shared my seed saving method last year. Well here it is. Coffee filters with pen. That pen didn’t stay very well. For the most part I’m guessing. This one is clearly “drought tolerant tomato”. These seeds are from the tomato I never watered. It made great sauce and I’m growing it again to see if it’s just as successful.

Lovely cups all labeled and nestled in their home.

Nothing germinated yet. Frankly I’m rather interested to see if any of the seeds I saved will germinate. It’s my first real attempt at it after all.

Stay tuned!

Neem oil review

In THIS post I mentioned problems I was having with pests on my indoor houseplants. BIG problems. I tried various methods of control to no avail.

Neem oil was one of those methods. I sprayed it onto my plants. It is often recommended online as a means of controlling houseplant pests. I would not suggest it. It seems to have damaged my plant leaves in places.

I acknowledge that my plants were under serious attack and leaf damage was caused by houseplant pests. Still, I have continued to spray my plants as a precaution so this damage is most certainly from the neem oil.

I do have healthy new growth though.

Jasmine

Black Peppercorn.

My peppercorn plant was so damaged at one point I was convinced it was not going to live. It’s doing great!

So why am I down on Neem oil if it does seem to have eradicated the pests? Well it didn’t. I’ve been physically washing the plants off in the sink every time I water them. It makes a big difference. And as you see in this peppercorn picture (kind of) I still have little eggs on my plants, so the neem oil is not repelling them.

One other plant worth mentioning is one that was a bit of an accident.

This is a rosemary plant I bought around Thanksgiving for cooking purposes. My lovely Daughter keeps yanking the leaves off of my larger plant. In fact it’s a small plant now as she’s lopped the top off. Anyway, so I bought this one from the grocery store and I didn’t think it’d live particularly long. I put it in this mason jar just to collect water as it sits in the kitchen window sill. I’m rather lazy so the jar has filled up with water over time. I was surprised to see the rosemary roots growing down into the water and the plant flourishing under these conditions. Rosemary, from what we’re told, is a dry loving plant. I think I’ll water mine a lot from now on.

How to grow pear trees from seed

Last winter I had a good attempt at growing apple trees from seed. I actually did a pretty good job until summer, when I no longer watered my tree seedlings and they all died. This time around I will have more time and hopefully will not repeat my mistakes.

I’ve found the hardest part is finding pear seeds at all. Most of the store bought pears I’ve gathered have 0-1 seeds in them. I was lucky, though, and found organic pears from Colorado at our local King Soopers. Naturally, I bought two of each variety. They had a lot of seeds in them so I’m hopeful of success.

So, just like apples I cut the pears up, divided out the flesh to the kids and collected the seeds. I cleaned them and placed them on a clean paper towel in a plastic cup. Then I add a small amount of water to the paper towel, put the cups in a plastic bag and wait. I find times vary by seed, though 2 months is pretty standard. I check weekly to removne any molding seeds and plant out germinated ones. Once you see a nice root growing you simply plant out to compost filled plastic cups, water and voila, easy peasy.

What really works to control houseplant pests?

That is the question I’ve been mulling as I suffer through pest after pest on my indoor plants. I believe I have spider mites. I know I have aphids, white flies and fungus gnats. Actually, at this point it’s more of a question of what I DO NOT have on my plants. This is so discouraging as my jasmine plant has finally bloomed, and I believe that to be what attracted the aphids. They are fully encompassing my jasmine flowers.

This just won’t do, so I started treating. I happened to have a 3-in-one organic pest spray on hand from previous years. So naturally I used that first. It knocked some of the bugs off but it didn’t kill a single one.

Organic Spray is seen here, dripping off my plant. The jasmine flowers are completely covered in bugs

Next I went out to the chicken run and grabbed some Diatomaceous Earth (DE). If you’ve heard of DE before than you know that people proclaim DE to cure absolutely any pest infestation. This dirt has received so many amazing accolades in the organic/homesteading/permaculture community that I had visions of the bugs flopping over dead on contact. So what actually happened? Well I covered my plants in dust is all. It didn’t have any impact on the pests. Well, I shouldn’t say that exactly. The impact it had on pests is that they’ve moved from on top of the leaf, where the dust is, to under the leaf, where it is not.

Next up is the old rubbing alcohol, soap, water wash. This I figured had to work as you are physically removing the bugs. It does work, you do remove them. However it is incredibly time consuming and you have to continue doing it.

I’m brushing the DE off my plants here.

Wiping the bugs off.

Neem oil is supposed to repel the creepy crawlies so I set about locating and acquiring that next. It has been applied to my jasmine plant and I will let you know if there is any real impact on the pests in my home as this was done very recently and I have nothing to report yet.

Ok. I admit. This was for photo purposes only. I put the Neem oil in water and sprayed in on the plants.

Sevin dust is a last ditch effort for me. I’m not even sure it will work as I used it on my peppercorn plant last winter and it almost killed the plant. If Neem oil and Sevin dust fail me I’ll simply have to throw my plants out to get rid of the nasty bugs. I’d really rather not kill my plants.