For the first time, insect invaders have disrupted our happy home! This afternoon I noticed some odd white dots on the leaves of the succulent I bought at the farmers' market a couple of weeks ago. I leaned closer and discovered the dots had six legs each, and were in fact light green and pear-shaped. In short- the dreaded aphid!! The internet tells me I have basically three options (short of chemical weaponry): I can bring in an army of hungry ladybugs, I can spray the plant liberally with a mixture of detergent, vegetable oil and warm water, or I can chuck it. Bringing even MORE insects into the house seems a bit like swallowing a spider to catch a fly-- in other words not a solution at all, just a different sort of problem. I'm not ready to throw the pretty thing out. So I have sprayed it and am crossing fingers. Any advice is welcome!
June 2010 Archives
There was a season of lettuce on our windowsill in April but whether it was the small volume or my general disinterest in lettuce we just never got too excited about it. We had a few cherry tomatoes and a lone jalapeno as well but those plants were so low-producing it seemed wasteful to keep the aerogarden plugged in for their sake. Now the only food growing in our house is a pot of mint and two scraggly basil plants (not hydroponic this time). I have a pretty good colony of aloe plants going from a kit that we received as a gift. They've outgrown their starter pot and seem to have survived their transplants to individual pots pretty well. I also have really lovely flowering succulent that I bought at the greenmarket a couple of weeks ago that is flourishing on the windowsill. It's been producing a lot of delicate orange flowers and has been really fun to watch.
The aerogarden is temporarily out of commission with a busted motor and our windowsill space is pretty well full but I'm not too worried about our lack of home-grown produce because the CSA season starts next week!! We've switched CSAs this year to one that has pickup right around the corner from our house. Sooo nice. Now instead of stressing out the entire dayabout whether I'll get out of work in time to make it out to the wilds of central Brooklyn by 8PM, the Brain Trust can meander over any time in the afternoon and grab our box of treats for the week. We're clearing out the veggie drawers and getting our kale recipes ready!
