Over-Wintering Plants and How to Care for them

 

Your Mandevilla plants that were thriving in the garden, bringing joy with all their fantastic blooms are suddenly getting yellow leaves when brought indoors. After some weeks, your beautiful Mandevillas or your Oleander look pathetic and seem to die. What happened? Tiny little critters, called spider mites are nesting and multiplying, and you detect even a miniature white net between the twigs of your plants. 

Spider mites are brought into the house via your shoes, and clothing, nestled in between animal fur, and, most importantly, from other infected plants or via the indoor planting soil, flowers, and vegetables brought into the house and even through window screens as they are so tiny.

Spider mites thrive in warm, dry conditions and can become a major problem during the winter when your dry house becomes the perfect breeding ground for them. Spider mites multiply very quickly and, in the right conditions, can double their population every couple of weeks.

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Humidity Too Low

When humidity is low, spider mites (Tetranychidae) can become a problem. The small eight-legged creatures are difficult to see with the naked eye and are mainly found on the underside of leaves near the leaf veins. The infested leaves are initially delicately speckled before they first turn silvery, then gray-brown, and finally, fall off. Another identifying feature is webbing which can be found in leaf axils and on leaf margins. 

• As a preventive measure, plants that overwinter in a dry, slightly cool place should be sprayed with water from time to time.
• The first thing you should do is quarantine the infested plant and inspect all surrounding houseplants for mites. 
• In case of infestation, shower the whole plant with lukewarm water. Wrap it in a plastic bag or a translucent garbage bag for three days, high humidity will kill the spider mites.
• A good prevention is to spray your house plants with tea tree oil or Neem oil.
• Canola oil-based pesticides smother the spider mites; especially the undersides of leaves should be treated

Here is a spider mite insecticide soap recipe:

1 small teaspoon of mild liquid soap

1 liter of tepid water

***** NEVER USE ANY CHEMICAL PESTICIDES *****

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Mandevilla Plants Overwintering

During the over-wintering in the house, the plant should be watered very sparingly and not fertilized at all. However, place it close to a sunny window - but in a cool room and away from heating outlets. Only in spring, around  April, some diluted liquid fertilizer can be added to the watering and the room temperature should be slowly increased. Spraying the leaves frequently with a water bottle keeps them moist - which spider mites don’t like. From late May on, when no frosts are expected, it can move outside again. Here it should first be accustomed to the sun again for a few days in partial shade.

Disinfect the Indoor Potting Soil

To ensure that your indoor plant soil is clear of bacteria and illnesses, disinfect it with hydrogen peroxide. To do this, just sprinkle some hydrogen peroxide in your organic potting mix. You also can sterilize potting soil in your oven. Place it in an oven-safe pan, cover it with foil, and bake it at 180 to 200 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes.

Oleander Indoors

Years ago, I had every winter an aphid problem with Oleanders in large pots that I brought into my solarium. I carried the whole pot into my shower and sprayed it with tea tree oil, but also pruned it a bit. 

Oleander plants (Nerium oleander) easily become victims of pests. In particular, some species of lice, as well as spider mites eat the oleander. However, since they significantly weaken the plants, it is essential to fight them. Healthy plants are more resistant and are not attacked as quickly as weaker ones. So often an infestation of pests indicates a care error such as the wrong location. Too much nitrogen can also be the cause, as it makes the tissue softer and more susceptible. 

Aphids (Aphidoidea) are much easier to detect than spider mites because of their size of a few millimeters. On the oleander, they only sit on fresh shoots and inflorescences, where they pierce the plant to get at its sweet sap. The first thing you usually notice is the white sheaths that are formed when aphids molt and stick to the plant.

https://getbusygardening.com/control-spider-mites/

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Earth-Friendly Gardening

Winter Berries and Pines 

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Niki Jabbour, author of The Year Round Vegetable Gardener, and Growing Under Cover was in the Globe & Mail recently, teaching Globe readers how their gardens can help fight climate change, by making their gardens peat-free and becoming converts to the no-dig movement.

“I stopped digging my gardens three years ago,” she says, adding that her soil (which was sandy) is now darker, dense with organic matter, and holds moisture much better. This has the added benefit of preventing the release of carbon that was previously stored in the soil, and which is disrupted and released by digging.

Peat bogs, which are under serious threat around the globe, store vast amounts of carbon, and if gardeners can do their part to preserve them they will be making a serious reduction in their carbon footprints!”

Gardening with ‘Garbage’

Look at used household items from a different perspective.  Newspaper and cardboard can be turned into effective weed barriers under mulch.  Empty yogurt containers poked with drainage holes make perfect starting pots for seeds.  Even used coffee grounds and crushed egg shells can become earth-friendly fertilizers.  

When you add paper, rip it into small pieces. Whole potatoes, onions, corn, carrots, etc. are slow to compost, cut them small before adding them to the compost bin.  Improve your soil and feed your garden naturally with compost you made from kitchen scraps and garden clean-ups. 

Keep leaves out of landfills!  Every year about 8 million tons of leaves end up there.  Another reason: leaves help the grass.  Leaves are full of nutrients, including nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium which improve the soil's health.  Those nutrients are being returned to the soil - but only if you use a lawnmower to cut them into small pieces.  

If you leave the leaves on the grass, it will exclude light.  And then the grass won't be able to photosynthesize.  Eventually, it would die under a thick layer of leaves. Shredded leaves can also be piled into garden beds.  Leaves are a resource - and not a problem!

Don't stop composting in winter! The material will freeze and then thaw, come spring. This way you have lots of material to create an earth-friendly garden in a couple of months.

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