Leaves are falling in abundance, and not just outdoors.
Chances are they’re clogging up the vacuum cleaner in the living room, too.
When plants arrive indoors after returning from summer vacation on the deck, we
shouldn’t be too surprised if they begin to shed a few leaves.
As days get shorter and light levels fall, it’s a signal to
plants to slow down, even stop growing for the winter. Outdoors it happens
slowly, but when a plant that spent the summer outdoors is suddenly dragged
indoors where light levels are considerably lower, the plant is thinking
winter, already? What happened to fall?
Between the shock and the panic it shuts down, stops growing
and the leaves begin to fall. Leaves that weren’t healthy in the first place
soon turn yellow and drop off. After a week or two the plant adjusts and rests
awhile until late winter when it will begin to produce new growth.
Sometimes the plant owner panics as well, immediately reaching
for the fertilizer in the mistaken belief the plant is starving to death,
except force feeding a plant has the opposite effect. Instead of producing
healthy leaves, guess what — they turn yellow. Fertilize only when there is
active growth.
Yellowing leaves may be due to disease — bacterial, viral,
fungal — and without a thorough examination by a Doctor House houseplant doctor,
it can be hard to determine the cause. More than likely, if the plant was
reasonably healthy outdoors, it’s less likely disease is the cause. More likely
insect pests have hitched a ride indoors.
If left outdoors, most insects quickly succumb to frost, but
when transported indoors they think they’re wintering in Florida, and since there’s
usually a bit more action happening on a winter vacation, it only takes one pair
of amorous bugs to begin producing offspring and soon enough they’re swarming
over the plant, sucking the green life out of the leaves.
It’s not always obvious there are bugs on the plant as (a),
they are frequently green, making them hard to see, or (b), they’re too small, making
them hard to see, or (c) they’re green and small . . .
The usual suspects are aphids or spider mites — or both. The
aphids tend to cluster around the stems and at the tips of new growth, if there
is any. They are easy to see when clustered together, but by then they’ve
already been reproducing like crazy, and worse still, aphids don’t need a mate
to start a family.
The other pest, almost invisible to any one over fifty, is
the spider mite. They love warm, dry homes, so conditions are perfect for them
to start a new family. They can be found mainly on the underside of leaves and
look like tiny reddish specks. Here’s where a magnifying glass helps considerably.
Look closely and you’ll see that these tiny specks are moving about. They’re
not true spiders; in fact, a real spider might keep them in check, but if one also
happened to hitch a ride indoors, chances are it was flattened on sight by a
half-crazed arachnophobe.
After about fifteen minutes,
rinse off the soap. Repeat a week later to be sure you got all the beasts. Oh,
and if you have other plants indoors, quarantine the newcomers or you’ll be
needing the garden rake indoors.
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