Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Pest Treatments

This is what I've done to begin my pest-control program:
1) Set out saucers of beer for the fungus gnats
2) Isolated plants with fungus from those that appear free of fungus or other problems
3) Put of starting the seeds I was going to start, until I get this all under control
4) Sprayed scale-infected plants with soap solution
5) Opened the bottom part of the greenhouse door and set the fan thermostat to a lower heat setting to increase air movement in the greenhouse and around the plants (Is this counterproductive? Will it help spread fungus?)
6) Scheduled daily MORNING work in the greenhouse, rather than afternoon work to avoid watering late in the day.

So far this appears to have brought things back under control.  I did have to just destroy a couple of plants that had been pretty much overcome by fungus.  They were all kalanchoes that I had started from cuttings in the spring of 2009 and then moved to larger pots several times during the summer.  It looks as though possibly with the last repotting in the late fall, I overcrowded them by planting several starts in a single larger pot.  As they filled in and branched out they were beautiful, but by the time they began blossoming in late January they were showing signs of stress which I failed to remedy, and then overlooked the start of the fungus until it had taken serious hold on those plants.  I've been able to control what few additional plants became affected because I addressed those immediately, but the original infected plants had to be destroyed.  Hard lesson.

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