sterile gardens, page-2

Hi Play2Win,

It is working well. I had some concerns that they would all fly off somewhere and that I'd be back to square one but not so. Still have the odd spidermite on the anthuriums but they are quarantined on the deck so I can keep an eye on them. Also some in Richmond Birdwing vines. Has not been all plain sailing however and I must admit to actually reading the directions on the bottle of maliathon but resisted using it at the very last moment.

I use eucalyptus oil for a lot of cleaning inside so I decided to mix up a solution of it with warm water snd palmolive dishwashing liquid and watered the anthuriums with it as I think that there may still be some of the mites/mealybugs in the soil. Didn't kill the plants and the new leaves emerging are not stunted like before. Intend to repeat this eucalptus/detergent watering in a week or so and then plan to repot all of them, making sure to disinfect pots before using them again.

It hasn't rained here for 6 weeks or so and I think this has helped also. It has been an interesting experiment. My husband thinks that the frogs will mop up whatever is left when their population explodes in November/December.