Today when I went out for class I checked the plants and noticed something new.
The Sedum at this point has lots of nooks and crannies where the new leaves connect to the stems. Hiding among the leaves were little black specks that resembled big pepper flakes (about 2x or 3x regular pepper.)
Since the Sedum isn't edible, my first instinct is to douse the whole thing in insecticide (recall that last year I had quite a bit of caterpiller damage.)
Yet I may wait a bit. While I never catch them doing it, I know that birds do visit my pots from the feathers they leave behind. Songbirds would be quite happy to eat caterpillars, once they get big enough to be noticable. If the black specks are aphids, then ladybugs will be happy to eat the interlopers.
I've also noticed a little damage to the lavender plant. Only a little, but a few leaves appear to have been cleanly snapped off. I like to think it was from a parent explaining that some plants smell nice, and that the least damaging way to take a leaf from a plant is to snip it off (rather than rip it.) Lavender doesn't grow especially quickly, particularly right now since it's still cool. But hopefully with the day-time temperatures in the lower 70s (and probably 5 to 10 degrees warmer with the southern exposure on my front porch) the lavender will start getting the signal to grow.
And finally, no seedlings have popped up yet in the white planter (the one I used last year to grow beets in). I put 8 nasturtium seeds in there, the vining type, which should poke through the earth by the end of this week, assuming no freak winter weather.
While nasturtiums are among the easiest of flowers to grow, they bloom best in poor soil. Potting soil, by design, is actually a great growing medium. So as it is I'm hoping that the beets last year sucked all the nutrients from the soil. Otherwise I'll get lots of leaves, and very few blooms. Still, the leaves are attractive, which will look nicer than the empty black dirt I've got hanging out on my windowsil right now.
2 comments:
I had a philodendron with some weird black spots on it, and my mom gave me a simple solution that seems to have worked. Ivory Liquid (dish detergent) in a spray bottled with water. Spray it on the plant and it helps destroy whatever's growing on it without harsh insecticides.
Now, if they are indeed caterpillars, you have a bigger can or worms (pun intended) to contend with.
I appreciate the tip! I went for a more...drastic solution...that hopefully won't do more than a little damage to some of the leaves. I nuked it with a heavy dosing of pyrethrin yesterday evening. I checked tonight and it appears to have caused some "burning" on the leaves, but many of the little black dots seem to have ruptured. I'm still not sure what is trying to attack the Sedum, (and something like botanical detergent, or an oil probably would have been a better first line defense, but hey, I've got an itchy trigger finger for caterpillars. Hungry little jerks.)
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