Hello Everyone,
This morning I took some photos of the Indoor garden.
From a distance everything looks nice, but my plants are under attack by thrips.
Thrips are a little winged insect that feed on the foliage, not so much taking bite out of, but rather sucking out the essential plant nutrients. It's not good, kind of like a slow cancer on the plants.
In this photo you can see the spots on the leaves. Generally in photos it just looks like spots, but in person it looks like slug juice and has a shiny appearance. I do find it strange that cameras do not pick this up, and this is consistent with photos across the internet in my brief search.
I've topped the soil with some cinnamon, because cinnamon is known to deter certain types of pests, and I really don't have anything else that I can think of to use for pest control at the moment.
It doesn't seem to be helping much.
Neem oil is known to work for thrips, so I intend to get some very soon.
The graptosedum bronze didn't look like this before the thrips, so I can only deduce that the thrips have this effect on succulents. It is saddening to see my plant in this state.
Otherwise it is a very healthy plant, and I am confident it can recover from this attack if I eradicate them soon.
I have a bunch of mixed variety flowers sprouting, and some bean plants in the row that hasn't sprouted yet. I'm a little worried about these sprouts in the presence of the thrips. Hopefully they just stay eating the bigger plants, but I have my doubts about that.
I have my pepper plant, green onions, and another graptosedum bronze outdoors this morning soaking up some sun.
I bet this is how the thrips got in here!
The thrip damage was so bad on a couple of the plants, that I decided to remove them. I never like killing plants, but indoor gardening is a different animal, and space efficiency is pretty important, especially when you are working in a small tent. If a couple of plants start falling behind or developing serious health problems, it generally makes little sense to try to save them, as this seems to be a losing battle more often than not. (at least for me)
This one labelled purple cheese (not a verified strain, was just labelled on the bag I got, before cannabis was legal in NY) was growing deformed leaves since a seedling, and the thrips were feasting on it, so I decided to take it out.
This was some swag bag stuff, and I deemed it done for. Chances of being able to rejuvenate it might have been 50/50, but it just wasn't looking great.
I always inspect the root systems on plants that I dispose of. This offers some insight into the how the other plants root systems are developing.
I was a little surprised at how healthy the root systems seemed. This gives me a bit more confidence about the remaining plants in the tent, as they are much healthier than these two were.
That's it for today,
The garden is not thriving at the moment, but I'm confident that I will tackle this small pestilence.
Thanks for stopping by, have a great day! -@futuremind