Herself's Houseplants

Never murder a house plant again

Do you know the number one killer of house plants? Starvation. There’s just not enough sunlight coming through the windows in the winter to feed your plants.

Do you know the number two killer of house plants? Lack of humidity. The average home is 67% drier than the Sahara Desert in the winter and most house plants come from humid tropical climates.

It can be frustrating trying to grow beautiful house plants. Let the doctor help you.

15 years of training and growing houseplants are combined with an intelligent expert system to instantly give you simple scientifically proven solutions.

- Simply scroll through a list of the 32 most common symptoms of plant distress and select the symptoms your plant is showing. The Doctor will do the rest.

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FEATURES
- In-depth detailed analysis along with a detailed solution
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Scale until recently was only a problem on my orchids. Lately down here in Houston it has become an outdoor problem as well. I wish it was as easy to fix on trees as it is on houseplants.

Scale is a group of insects that feed on plants. You’ll notice them on your houseplants as hard bumps about an 1/8″ to 1/16″ across and usually dark brown. They don’t move or look like bugs. Usually plants will have sticky areas along the leaves as well.

Scale can also be white and long, thin bumps. However, I’ve only seen these scales outside.

Scale insects suck the sap out of your plant.

Because of their protective shell the only time spray on insecticides help is when they are first born and crawling to the location where they will build a shell over themselves.

Luckily houseplants are small and I’ve found that placing the infected plant in the sink, washing the leaves with soapy water ( ~ 1 tablespoon dish soap to a gallon of water ) will remove all the scale.

I then follow up with an insecticidial oil spray.

More information:
Scale Insects
Keys to scale insects ( photos of various kinds of scale for identification )

( or any other non-bulb plant )

The number one reason plants do not bloom indoors is they need more light. More light should always be the first thing you think of when ever a house plant has a problem.

So first try to find a sunnier location or put a fluorescent light over the plant several hours a day.

If the plant is still being difficult about blooming, try a balanced fertilizer, say 10-10-10 or so.

The second number is phosphorus and this is usually what is needed when a plant doesn’t bloom because of a nutritional problem. If you can find a fertilizer that has a higher middle number than the other two numbers try that. Because so much phosphorus is out in the environment and because of the harm it does most fertilizer companies don’t sell high phosphorus fertilizer any more.

If the plant stubbornly refuses to respond to light or fertilizer try giving it less water than it wants. You don’t want to dry it out, you just want to stress it a little. I find this almost always works if sun or fertilizer doesn’t.

If the plant still refuses, you must either learn to love it for its foliage or dump it and try a different plant.

I found an itty bitty lizard living in one of the orchids upstairs. He scurries off when he sees me but keeps moving back into the orchid.

I think I’ll leave him there, he doesn’t seem to be doing any harm and seems to be getting by just fine.

Another tip you have a free loader is waking up to find small amounts of soil scattered around your house plant. Clean up the soil in the morning and it re-appears in the evening. This is a sign you have a caterpillar or some earthworms working the plant soil. It’s great for the plant, but messy.