Parasites

Yay! No power outage for me, after all! And since all housework was already done – I had a day completely to myself! So I decided to make beef stew with Maultaschen! It was reasonably warm but very windy, so outdoors would be too cold.

I have quite a lot of pot plants, though, so I could do some indoor gardening. I’m beginning to get a little frustrated though: It would appear that this place is some sort of magnet for every type of plant-parasite under the sun!

First it was my Fuchsia which somehow got some sort of parasite and died. Since the plant was already sickly when I brought it home from the nursery, I didn’t think too much of it.

Then another plant – which I never identified – got some sort of white silky, sticky stuff on it. I took a sample to a nursery who said it was white-fly and gave me a treatment. Sadly, I overdosed the plant and it did not survive.

Unfortunately that white-fly is extremely contagious, and my basil was its next victim.

Now I was beginning to get rather angry, so I did some research – and rather than using poison, I switched to a more natural – albeit more laborious – treatment: First I remove every single bit of silky substance off the plant; which unfortunately also means some trimming. Then I spray the plant with a mix of dish-soap, oil and water – highly diluted. But the oil in particular suffocates the white-fly larvae, so that should stop it.

My rosemary is still alive, though it’s looking a bit puny. I couldn’t understand why the oregano didn’t seem to improve, so today I decided to re-pot it – and found the whole pot completely infested with white-fly!

I had to cut several tips right off, cleaned off what I could then sprayed the roots, re-planted it in new potting soil and sprayed the soil and the plant. Let’s hope that’s finally got rid of that parasite!

The rosemary’s soil wasn’t infested – at least not from what I could see, so I just cleaned it and sprayed it. Next I took a look at my Poinsettia, which for some inexplicable reason appears to be wilting! Well, guess what? Yep, another parasite! I have no idea what this is, but I’ve removed every single one I found, rubbed the stems up and down to remove every last mite of parasite-dust and hope that it will finally recover!

On top of that I’ve been dealing with that powdery mildew which has been attacking my tomatoes; some new kind of grey gunk attacking another unidentified plant in my vegetable patch.

And then yesterday – glad to finally see another daffodil poking through … only to discover they, too, have contracted yet another type of parasite! Some sort of lice or something. I cleaned them off as much as I could then sprayed them. And lastly, my spring onions seem to be attacked by something that looks like rust – which I’m planning to tackle as my final project for today.

That’s a total of five different parasites attacking my plants! Seriously? Well, to add injury to insult, I’ve been getting a migraine all day. I was fine when I got up, but throughout the day it’s just been getting worse and worse. At four I finally gave in and took medication (I’d tried eating and drinking, in case either of those might be the cause – no luck). So, early night for me tonight.